k 



TAINE'S ^A^ORKS, 



/. NOTES ON ENGLAND. 
II. ENGLISH LITER A TURE. 2 vols. 
///. ON INTELLIGENCE. 
IV. THE PHILOSOPHY OF GREEK ART. 
V. THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART IN THE 
NE THERLANDS. 
VI. THE IDEAL IN ART. 
VII. ITALY, ROME AND NAPLES. 
VIII. ITALY, FLORENCE AND VENICE. 

Holt & Williams, Publishers, 

25 Bond Street, New York. 



o 



x/ 



d 



Notes on England 



BY 



HffTAINE 

D.C.L. OXON., ETC. 



TRANSLATED, WITH AN INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER, BY 

W. F. RAE 

Author of "Westward by Rail." 






W "^ IVITH A If^^TRAIT 





NEW YORK 
HOLT & WILLIAMS 

1872 




I 






/y/c 






L 



CONTENTS. 



PAC. 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER, CONTAINING — 

1. A SKETCH OF M. TAINE's LIFE AND CAREER 

2. AN OUTLINE OF HIS METHOD OF CRITICISM XX 

3. COMMENTS UPON HIS OPINIONS AND WRITINGS . . , Ws 
CHAPTEB 

I. BOULOGNE TO LONDON BRIDGE 1 

II. SUNDAY IN LONDON. TgE STREETS AND PARKS ... 9 

III. ST. JAMES'S PARK, RICHMOND, THE DOCKS, AND EAST-END . 25 

IV. VISIT TO EPSOM AND TO CREMORNB GARDENS ..... 37 

V. TYPICAL ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN 47 

VI. ENGLISH GIRLS AND AUTHORESSES 82 

VII. ENGLISH MARRIAGES AND MARRIED WOMEN 94 

VIII. ENGLISH HOUSEHOLDS 109 

IX. ENGLISH SCHOOL BOYS AND SCHOOL LIFE 120 

X. LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY 137 

XI. VILLAGES AND FARMHOUSES 153 

XII. LANDED PROPRIETORS AND ENGLISH GENTLEMEN .... 166 

XIII. MANSIONS, PARKS, AND GARDENS 177 

XIV. THE CLERGY 190 

XV. THE GOVERNING CLASSES AXD THE GOVERNMENT .... 196 
XVI. RAGGED SCHOOLS, HOSPITALS, WORKHOUSES, AND THE 

VOLUNTEERS 205 

XVIL THE CONSTITUTION, THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT . . . . 218 

XVnr. THE CLUBS, THE BRITISH MUSEUM, THE CRYSTAL PALACE . 229 



^<^ 



vi CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER PAaB 

X.IX. STREET PREACHERS AND RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS .... 234 

XX. ARISTOCRATIC ASCENDENCY 240 

XXI. SOCIETY AS DEPICTED BY "punch " 244 

XXII. SPORTING, POLITICAL, AND SOCIAL CARICATURES IN "punch" 2-52 

XXIII. INNS OF COURT, BARRISTERS, AND JUDGES 261 

XXIV. THE THEATRES. LIVING IN LONDON 266 

XXV. MANUFACTURES AND ARTISANS 272 

XXVI. MANCHESTER AND LIVERPOOL 279 

XXVII. ENGLISH WORKING MEN 286 

XXVIII. SCENES IN MANCHESTER 300 

XXIX. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ENGLISH MIND 306 

XXX. FRENCH WIT AND ENGLISH HUMOUR 320 

XXXI. ENGLISH PAINTINGS AND ENGLISH PAINTERS 328 

XXXII. MODERN PAINTERS AND RUSKIN's CRITICISMS 335 

XXXIII. ENGLISH POETRY AND RELIGION 344 

XXXIV. A TRIP THROUGH SCOTLAND 356 

XXXV. RETURN HOME. PBENCHMEN AND ENGLISHMEN .... 369 



INTEODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

T AST summer tlie University of Oxford resolved to 
^ confer upon Dr. Dollinger the honorary degree of 
Doctor of Civil Law. It was considered fitting that a 
famous and an accomplished Frenchman should be 
associated in the exceptional mark of respect paid to an 
erudite and illustrious German. Out of the numerous 
Frenchmen of eminence and renown who might with 
propriety have been chosen, M. Taine was unanimously 
selected. 

Shortly afterwards, the publication of a series of 
papers, entitled " Notes on England," was begun in 
the columns of the Paris Temja^. Wherever French 
newspapers circulate and the French language is 
read, these *' JSTotes " attracted attention. They were 
quoted, commented on, praised, and criticised. Almost 
contemporaneously, a selection from them, trans- 
lated into English, appeared in the columns of The 
Daily News. Wherever English is read, these transla- 
tions furnished matter for talk and discussion ; extracts 
from them were published by the Press of the United 
Kingdom, of the United States, of India, of Canada_, 

I 




viii INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER, 

of Australia; they were made tlie themes of leading 
articles ; they were employed to point morals and to 
clench arguments. Again and again was the question 
put, " Who is M. Taine, what is his history, how has he 
learned to treat English topics with so much intelli- 
gence and effect ? " The more enlightened and critical 
reader, whose acquaintance with current Kterature em- 
braces what has been written in the Athe^iceum, the 
Saturday Revieio, the Spectator^ the Rxaminer, the New 
York Nation, the Edinburgh and Westminster Remews, 
could have been at no loss in returning an answer 
to this inquiry, and in stating with considerable 
precision the rank of M. Taine as a writer, and his 
general character as a critic and a philosopher. Yet 
every newspaper reader is neither perfectly well in- 
formed nor personally laborious in adding to his defective 
stock of accurate information. Nor, as far as M. Taine is 
concerned, would a natural or acquired thirst for useful 
ins'truction be speedily and completely slaked by taking 
the recognised short cut to the fountain of knowledge, 
and turning to a dictionary of contemporary biography. 
The best modern biographical dictionary contains very 
meagre and unsatisfactory details about the doings and 
life of M. Taine. It is my present intention to supply 
the more interesting and important particulars which, 
are lacking. By weaving them into a brief sketch of 
M. Taine' s career, and by furnishing an outline of 
his literary achievements and aims, I hope to supply 
such an introduction to this volume as may prove ser- 
viceable to all who, before or after they shall hafe 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. ix 

perused it, may feel specially desirous of forming a 
closer personal intimacy with its author. 



At Youziers, a small town on the frontier of Cham- 
pagne and Ardennes, Hyppolite-Adolphe Taine was 
born on the 21st of April, 1828. His family belonged to 
the French middle class ; to that superior class which has 
no exact equivalent in this country, which is composed 
of those who belong to Nature's aristocracy by virtue 
of intellect -and education, who, though never formally 
ennobled by a monarch, are fully as much respected 
in France as the lineal descendants of the Crusaders, 
and the undisputed possessors of the oldest and most 
renowned historic titles. His father was a solicitor; 
his uncles and his cousins were notaries, merchants, 
civil engineers. His grandfather was sub-prefect at 
Eocroi during the first Bourbon restoration of an 
hundred days ; several of his relations, on his father's 
and his mother's side, held posts of influence and 
distinction, were deputies in the Lower House of the 
Legislature during the reign of Louis Philippe, and 
in the Assembly during the Republic of 1848. They 
were well-to-do but not wealthy people. His father, 
who was a man of studious habits and considerable 
learning, taught him Latin. An uncle, who had resided 
in America for some time, taught him English. One 
of his early pleasures was reading English books, more 
especially the classical works of fiction of the last 



X INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

century. To him, as to other French, schoolboys, light 
literature was forbidden fruit. Yet he was permitted 
to read any English book he pleased, the perusal of 
works in a foreign tongue being regarded as a species 
of study which it was right to encourage and commend. 
To the advantage he took of his opportunities in 
early youth, is attributable much of the familiar ac- 
quaintance which he displayed in after years with the 
immortal works of the best English writers. 

When he was thirteen years old, his father died. 
His mother took him to Paris at the age of fourteen. 
For one year he was a boarder in a first-class private 
school, then he became a pupil at the College of 
Bourbon, an important public school, which, like 
many other institutions in France, changes its name 
when the government changes its form, and was 
consequently known during the monarchy as the 
College of Bourbon, during the Republic of 1848 
as the Fourcroy Lyceum, during the Second Empire 
as the Bonaparte Lyceum, and is at present called 
the Condorcet Lyceum. He had two sisters, whose 
training and happiness were the objects of his 
mother's special care and forethought. Neverthe- 
less, she was naturally unremitting in promoting her 
only son's welfare and advancement, watching over 
his studies with tender solicitude, rejoicing in his 
triumphs as if they were her own, encouraging him 
amid his difiiculties and mortifications, nursing him 
during long illnesses, keeping house for him in his 
riper years, and only relinquishing her assiduous ma- 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. xi 

ternal cares wlien lie finally obtained a not less devoted 
and affectionate companion in the person of a wife. 

Wlien M. Taine was studying at tlie College of 
Bourbon, other youths, who afterwards became famous, 
were pupils also ; but none eclipsed him, either in 
mental precocity, or in successful rivalry for distinction. 
At the general competition in 1847, he carried off the 
first prize for the Latin essay in rhetoric, and in 1848 
he obtained the two second prizes for philosophy. His 
attainments warranted him in becoming a candidate, 
in the latter year, for admission to the Normal School. 
This is a seminary of learning into which none are 
admitted except those who succeed in passing a severe 
examination, and in which the pupils qualify them- 
selves for enrolment among the higher class of teachers 
in connection with the University, and under the con- 
trol of the Minister of Public Instruction. Many, how- 
ever, make use of it as a stepping-stone to a purely 
literary career. Several Frenchmen of note in the 
world of letters passed through the JN^ormal School 
at the same time as M. Taine, acted for a short time 
as Professors, as he did, and then, severing their con- 
nection with the department of education, devoted 
themselves exclusively to cultivating the field of litera- 
ture. Four of these men were his comrades and com- 
petitors. They were the late M. Prevost-Paradol, M. 
Edmond About, M. Francisque Sarcey, M. J. J. Weiss. 
The first was junior to him by one year, the second 
and third were his own age, the fourth was one year 
his senior. 



xii INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

Of the four, M. Prevost-Paradol was in many respects 
tlie most remarkable. The son of a celebrated actress, 
be, too, was educated at tbe College of Bourbon, and 
distinguisbed bimself tbere. After passing tbrougb. 
tbe Normal Scbool, b.e spent some years in private 
study, prepared a work to wbicb tbe Frencb. Academy 
awarded tbe prize :for eloquence, took bis degree of 
Doctor of Letters, and tben accepted tbe post of Pro- 
fessor of Frencb Literature in tbe college at Aix. 
He filled tbis cbair for one year only. Tempting 
offers to enter tbe ranks of journalism made bim 
not only resign tbis post, but also withdraw bis name 
from tbe list of tbose wbo desired employment as 
University instructors. He was first engaged upon tbe 
staff of tbe Journal des Debats. To tbis journal, as 
well as to others, and to the Revue des Deux Mondes, 
he contributed articles, which excited notice for the 
delicacy, the point, tbe polish, tbe incisiveness of their 
style. He was a French Junius. He resembled the 
great unknown English pamphleteer in being a lite- 
rary irreconcilable, differing from him, however, in 
wielding a sharp, glittering rapier, instead of a heavy, 
crushing club. He attacked the Second Empire by 
bis epigrams and allusions with quite as great effect 
as Junius did when be warred against the policy of 
George III. and the friends of that monarch by scath- 
ing sarcasm and unmeasured denunciation. The 
Courier du Dimanehey to which he was the principal 
contributor, became a thorn in the sido. of the Im- 
perial Government. Even more annoying than his 



. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. xiii 

effective yet indirect onslauglits upon Imperialism, 
was tlie cleverness with wliicli lie avoided a direct 
breach of the laws prohibiting freedom of discussion. 
M. Prevost-Paradol's art consisted in saying what 
he pleased, in such a way as to give the maximum 
of pain to his opponents, without affording them 
a legitimate opportunity for putting their fingers 
upon the passage which rankled in their minds, and 
stating, with good reason, that the incriminated 
passage was discourteous, in bad taste, contrary 
to fact, and a disgrace to the writer. I^othing was 
left them but to put themselves wholly in the wrong, 
by exercising arbitrary repression. As the Courier du 
Dimanche could neither be legally prosecuted nor con- 
clusively answered, it was summarily suppressed. A 
pamphlet which M. Prevost-Paradol wrote on the " Old 
Parties'' was interpreted by subservient judges as 
inciting to the overthrow of the Imperial dynasty, and 
for this hypothetical offence he was fined £40 and im- 
prisoned for a month. The injustice and persecution of 
which, in common with the late Count Montalembert, 
he was the victim, recoiled upon its instigators and 
perpetrators. 

M. Prevost-Paradol became popular in all inde- 
pendent circles, and enjoyed the esteem of all un- 
biassed critics. His admirers were nearly as numerous 
in this country as in his own. Indeed, an English 
reader could hardly help thinking favourably of the 
French writer who constantly held up constitutional 
government in England as a pattern deserving un- 



xiv INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

grudging praise and careful study. To his political 
attitude, rather than to the intrinsic value of his 
writings, he owed it that, at the early age of thirty- 
seven, he was elected a member of the French 
Academy, a body which usually refuses to open its 
ranks to young men, however promising, who have 
merely produced a few ephemeral works, unless their 
authors are Ministers of State, or Archbishops. His 
highest ambition was now gratified. 

About this time he received the remarkable and 
gratifying distinction of being asked to contribute to The 
Times, letters on French topics of the day. In common 
with his brother Academicians, he enjoyed by his posi- 
tion, and irrespective of his personal achievements, 
the reputation of being a master of his incompar- 
able mother-tongue. Many of them doubtless spoke 
English without hesitation, read it with pleasure and 
understanding. But how many among them would 
have ventured upon undergoing the ordeal of satisfying 
the critical readers of the great English journal ? His 
own wonderful success, the fluency, ease, grace, and 
vigour with which he expressed himself in English, 
formed an additional claim to the admiration and 
respect of Englishmen. For his own part, he assured 
his English friends that, never till he had become a 
contributor to The Times, had he learned the real value 
of his pen. Despite the liberality with which he was 
remunerated, he found the support of his family a 
heavy burden. He had no private means ; he had 
accumulated little, and he was weary of writing at 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. xv 

all and still more weary of writing for gain. Tlien 
it was that by him, as by many other patriotic and 
erainent Frenchmen, the prospect of the establish- 
ment of constitutional and parliamentary government 
was hailed with delight. He unquestionably preferred 
ordered liberty with the Empire, to the almost 
inevitable alternative of a revolution accompanied v/ith 
bloodshed and followed by anarchy. To refuse to give 
fair play to the new order of things, to reject the 
repentance of the eleventh hour which promised to 
be all the more sincere inasmuch as it was based 
upon irresistible expediency, appeared to him worse 
than a blunder. He accepted the apparent trans- 
formation, and did so in good faith. Everything 
appeared going smoothly and satisfactorily when 
the astute and imscrupulous M. Rouher ceased to 
be the first minister of Napoleon III. M. Ollivier, 
who succeeded him, was known to be vain and ambitious ; 
but he was supposed to be honest, and was believed to 
be competent. Along with others who had been in 
opposition during the evil days, M. Prevost-Paradol 
became reconciled to the Imperial Government when 
a happier and brighter era seemed to have dawned 
uj3on France. He gave a visible hostage • of his con- 
fidence and expectations by accepting the honourable and 
coveted post of Minister at Washington. Hardly had 
he entered upon the duties of his office than he learned 
that France had challenged Prussia to mortal combat. 
What his feelings were can be easily surmised. During 
the year 1867 he discussed in La France NouveUe the 



xvi INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

contingency of a war between France and Prussia, 
adding tlie following significant and memorable reflec- 
tions : '' On tbe supposition that Prussia were yicto- 
rious, it is easy to see tbat such, an occurrence would 
be the death of the greatness of France, though the 
nation would not be destroyed Some rectifica- 
tion of our frontier to the advantage of Prussia — the 
sad prelude to still greater — would be the immediate 

efiect of our reverses Germanic unity, hastened 

and pushed forward by the force and prestige of Prus- 
sian victories, would be instantly consummated. Yes, 
France is destined to pay in any event ; with the blood 
of her sons if she conquers ; with her greatness, and, 
perhaps, with her national existence, if she succumbs." 
Despairing of his country should she prove the victor, 
or be vanquished, he died by his own hand. More 
courageous, or more desponding than the members of 
the dynasty which had duped him, he surrendered 
his life as a sacrifice to the intrigues and deceptions of 
a crooked and baneful Imperialism. 

M. Edmond About has shown himself, on the whole, 
a very difierent man from M. Prevost-Paradol. M. 
About has made money by his writings, and he has not 
yet been made an ambassador. He has dabbled in 
politics, and left it an open question whether he has any 
permanent and rational political convictions. He has 
written novels, pamphlets, plays ; his writings have all 
been successful, but his plays have not all been applauded. 
His great distinction is his style; his great success 
consists in putting things. When he left the Normal 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. xvii 

School, lie obtained admission into tlie Scliool at AtKens, 
maintained by the French Goyernment with a yiew 
to perpetuate and advance the study of Grecian archae- 
ology. He wrote one lively treatise on an archaso- 
logical topic, and then published his work on " Con- 
temporary Greece," a work which charmed the reading 
public everywhere save in Greece, and of which the suc- 
cess determined his vocation. Since then he has been a 
prolific author, and become a conspicuous notability in 
literature. The adaptability of his character is as marked 
as the elasticity of his style. He can write well on any 
subject ; he imparts freshness to whatever he touches, 
and he upholds with extreme fervour and with an air of 
conviction the side which he espouses. If the Germans 
could be terrified by phrases, he would have put them 
to flight. His letters as a War Correspondent, at the 
opening of the campaign, produced a very difierent im- 
pression in this country from that produced by " ToUa " 
and the " Roman Question." In them he exhibited 
himself as a fire-eater of the most ferocious type. His 
reputation in France, however, has apparently suffered 
no abatement. He has narrowly failed being elected a 
member of the Academy. That he will become an 
Academician, at least, is hardly doubtful. That he 
is one of the cleverest writers of the day cannot be 
denied. 

M. Taine's other two comrades soon abandoned the 
profession of teaching the young for that of directing 
the adult through the columns of the public press. M. 
Sarcey was constantly squabbling with the authorities 



xviii INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER, 

during the seven years tliat he acted as Professor. 
Indeed, those who had been the most brilliant pupils 
of the JS'ormal School, immediately before the advent 
of the Second Empire, found it impossible to maintain 
harmonious relations with the Imperial adminis- 
trators. Much of the bitterness which they manifested 
as journalists was due to the independent principles 
they had imbibed at school, coupled with the vexatious 
and inquisitorial conduct of their superiors, who 
expected that they would become meek and ready 
tools for the maintenance and glorification of the 
dynasty which had betrayed and strangled the 
Bepublic. As a contributor to popular Parisian 
journals, M. Sarcey is noted for his efiective and 
sparkling articles. He remained in Paris whilst it 
was besieged by the Grermans; and his account of 
what occurred is one of the best narratives of the 
siege that has been produced. M. Weiss continued 
to act as a Professor rather longer than any of the 
others. He filled with great success the chair of 
French literature, which M. Prevost-Paradol had 
occupied and adorned. His lectures were exceedingly 
able. Since he definitively entered the ranks of 
journalism, he has become one of its acknowledged 
ornaments. 

During the regular term of three years that M. 
Taine was a pupil of the Normal School, the method 
of instruction which prevailed was weU fitted to pro- 
mote and stimulate intellectual activity. Personally, he 
required no special incentive to work hard and to excel. 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER, xix 

He was able, by bis marvellous quickness and industry, 
to condense an immense amount of study into a brief 
space of time. Sometimes, be performed tbe tasks of 
a montb in tbe course of a week. Tbus be gained 
tbree clear weeks during wbicb to follow bis own 
devices ; and be utilized tbe time by studying tbeology 
and. pbilosopby, reading all tbe autbors of note in botb 
departments, and discussing tbe questions wbicb arose 
witb congenial spirits of bis own standing. All bis 
fellow-pupils were subjected by bim to a personal 
examination. To use bis own pbrase be loved to 
*' read '' {feuilleter) tbem ; in otber words, to probe tbeir 
minds and scrutinize tbeir tbougbts. Altbougb aEoman 
Catbolic by early training, yet be was no implicit be- 
liever in Roman Catbolic dogmas. Witb some pupils 
wbo were ardently attacbed to tbe Cburcb of Eome, 
as well as witb otbers wbo partially sympathised with 
bim, be entered into discussions, in wbicb tbeological 
doctrines were treated witb entire freedom, tried 
by tbe toucbstone of reason, and subjected to keen 
logical investigation. Indeed, tbe scbool was a tbeatre 
of controversy, tbe pupils openly arguing witb eacb 
otber, and tbe Professors sanctioning and encourag- 
ing tbe most tborougbgoing expression of individual 
and unfettered opinion. Trained in sucb an arena, 
it is no wonder tbat tbe pupils became imbued witb 
a strong notion of individual independence, and were 
ill prepared to brook tbe sligbtest intellectual restraint 
or dictation. 

Sbortly before tbe tbree years' training of M. Taine 



XX INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

and his comrades was ended, tlie Director of the Normal 
School, M. Dubois, was constrained to resign the post 
he had adorned. M. Michelle, a less enlightened and 
able man, and a willing ally of the reactionary ^Darty, 
ruled in his stead. The times were unpropitious for 
liberty of thought. The Emperor jN^apoleon had attained 
the object of his life, and he had to pay the price which 
the priests claimed for their support. They had served 
him heart and soul ; he furnished them, in return, with 
the arm of the flesh requisite for the maintenance of 
their spiritual pretensions. M. Taine was one of the 
suflerers from the new order of things. Those who 
pass a certain examination are appointed to the most 
easy and lucrative posts. He presented himself for 
examination, but was rejected on the avowed ground 
that his philosophical opinions were erroneous in them- 
selves and mischievous in their tendency. This unfair- 
ness was resented by several men of eminence who had 
taken an interest in him, and who had been struck by 
his talents. Owing to the warm advocacy of M. Guizot, 
M. Saint Marc Girardin, and the Due de Luynes, he 
hoped to procure a post which might compensate by its 
situation for its inferior character, and he requested, as 
a special favour, for his mother's sake rather than for 
his own, that he might be appointed to fill a vacancy 
in the North of France. The rejply was a nomination 
to a post at Toulon, in the extreme South. Thence he 
was transferred to Never s, and from Nevers to Poitiers, 
remaining four months only at each place. His salary 
for the first year was £66 ; a sum which, tnough a 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. xxi 

little in excess of tliat wherewith Goldsmith's good 
parson deemed himself passing rich, was considerably 
less than that upon which it was possible to live in 
comfort. However, he managed to exist by practising 
the most rigid economy. 

His spare moments he spent in close study, occupying 
himself chiefly with the works of Hegel, and sketching 
out a comprehensive philosophical work. He was gene- 
rally regarded as a suspicious character. It was no 
secret that his private opinions did not accord with those 
held and approved in official circles. Hence the parti- 
zans of the ruling powers were lynx-eyed and eager in 
detecting his failings. In France, nothing is easier 
than to circulate false reports, unless it be the ease in 
getting them accepted as authentic. Naturally, there 
was not the least difficulty in discrediting M. Taine 
by falsely representing that he had eulogised Danton 
in the presence of his pupils, and held up Paul de 
Kock to them as a model. This alleged grave sin of 
commission was followed by a still more heinous and 
perfectly incontestable sin of omission. The college 
chaplain preferred one of those requests which are 
equivalent to commands. He gave M. Taine the 
option of inditing, in honour of the Bishop of the 
diocese, either a Latin ode or a French dithyramb. 
M. Taine declined to praise the Bishop either in 
prose or verse, either in ancient Latin or modern 
French. For this irreverent refusal, which was re- 
garded as confirmatory of the darkest charges and the 
worst fears, he soon received a letter of censure 



xxii INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

irom tlie Miulster of Public Instruction. The official 
reprimand was coupled with a threat that, should he 
offend again, he would be instantly dismissed. Several 
months afterwards he was appointed to teach a class of 
little children at Besancon. This was a significant 
hint that he was regarded as a black sheep. He deemed 
it wise to give up a struggle in which he was certain 
to be checkmated at every turn. At his own request, 
he was placed upon the retired list. 

Returning to Paris, he received an advantageous 
offer to act as Professor in a large private seminary. 
He closed with it, and recommenced teaching. But 
even here his sins soon found him out, or rather his 
enemies did. An order was issued forbidding those 
who were members of the University staff from giving 
lectures in private institutions. As a last resource he 
began to give lessons as a tutor, with the view both of 
earning his daily bread, and of being able to use his pen 
Avith entire independence. Moreover, he completed his 
own education, and enlarged the sphere of his attain- 
ments, by attending the courses of lectures at the 
School of Medicine, the Museum of Natural History, 
and some of the lectures at the Sorbonne and the Sal- 
■Detriere. In 1853 he took the decree of Doctor of 
Letters. As is customary, he wrote two theses on this 
occasion, the one in Latin being " De Personis Plato- 
nicis," the other in French being an ''Essai sur les 
Fables de Lafontaine." The latter was the reverse of 
an ordinary University essay. It was the formal enun- 
ciatic n of new critical doctrines ; it was the gauntlet 



INTRODUCTORY ChAPTER. xxi i 

thrown down by a new aspirant for intellectual 
honours ; it was tlie bold maintenance of a modern 
paradox, illustrated and enforced by examples drawn 
from Lafontaine. The novelty of the views advanced 
was matched by the freshness and vivacity, the vigour 
and variety of the language. By the public it was 
received with such favour that it speedily passed into 
a second edition. 

The French Academy having offered a prize in 
1854 for an essay upon Livy, considered as write, 
historian, M. Taine entered the lists. Among 
works sent in, his was admitted to be the best, yet 
prize was not awarded to it on the ground that 
essay " was deficient in gravity and in a proper degree 
of admiration for the splendid name and imposing 
genius of him whom he had to criticise.'' He recast 
his essay, and submitted it a second time to the judg- 
ment of the tribunal. It was now pronounced the best 
of those presented, and fully entitled to the prize. In 
reporting to the Academy the committee's decision, 
M. Yillemain expressed their satisfaction in crowning a 
" solid and new work, wherein the sentiment of anti- 
quity and the modern method were suitably blended, 
and which skilfully set forth all the questions concern- 
ing historic certitude, local truth, correct information, 
dramatic passion and taste to which the Annals of 
Livy had given rise. .... The young and clever man 
of learning, the victor in this competition, has had 
to produce a fragment of history as well as a piece of 
criticism." After intimating his disagreement with 

c 



XXIV INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

M. Taine in matters of detail, M. Yillemain concluded 
his report by saying, " Let us, however, congratulate 
M. Taine upon this noble and erudite first appearance 
in classical letters, and let us wish for similar candi- 
dates at our competitions, and similar instructors of 
youth in our schools." The Academicians smiled 
at this sarcastic reflection on the authorities for 
having refused to avail themselves of the teacher's 
services. 

The prize essay was published with a short preface, 
which startled some members of the Academy, and 
made them desire to recall their praises and undo their 
acts. ^. Taine wrote to the effect that, according to 
Spinoza, man's place in relation to nature, is not that of 
an empire within an empire, but of a part in a whole ; 
that man's inner being is subject to laws in the same 
way as the external world ; moreover, that there is a 
dominant principle, a ruling faculty, which regulates 
thought and imparts an irresistible and inevitable 
impulse to the human machine. Believing these 
things, M. Taine offered his *' Essay on Livy" as an 
example of their truth. Upon this the cry was raised 
that to write in this way was to deny the freedom of 
the will, and to become ihQ apostle of fatalism. A 
more cogent objection was the incongruity between the 
ideas represented by two such names as Spinoza and 
Livy, and the paradox implied m putting forward the 
writings of the Homan historian as confirmatory of 
the philosophical speculations of the Dutch Jew. Yet 
the general reader was gratified with the book. Its 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. xxv 

autlior's ability was indisputable. If be made few 
conyerts, be gained admirers. 

A severe affection of tbe tbroat compelled bim to 
quit Paris and to seek relief from tbe famous springs of 
tbe Pyrenees. After lasting two years, during wbicb 
be lost tbe use of bis voice, tbe malady finally suc- 
cumbed to tbe curative action of tbe mineral waters. 
It is notewortby tbat at tbis period bis favourite 
book was Spenser's "Faerie Queene," a work wLioIi 
bardly any of bis countrymen bave read at all, ■. ; .<] 
wbicb few of mine bave read tbrougb. To M. Ta: .,< • 
intimate knowledge of Spenser is due tbe sple ■<. 
and discriminating eulogium passed upon tbe great 
Elizabetban poet in tbe " History of Englisb Litera- 
ture." His enforced sojourn among tbe mountains 
supplied bim witb fresb material for literary composi- 
tion. Tbis took tbe form of a " Journey to tbe Pyre- 
nees," a work wbicb became more popular tban tbe 
"Essay on Livy." Tbe babits of tbe people and of 
tbe tourists are depicted witb mucb point, and tbe 
mountain scenery witb great vividness ; enougb is said 
about botany, geology, natural bistory, to give pitb to 
tbe wbole, witbout wearying tbe reader wbo understands 
none of tbese tbings, or appearing commonplace to tbe 
reader wbo is perfectly conversant witb tbem. An 
edition of tbis work, witb illustrations by M. Gustave 
Dore, bas since been publisbed. Tbe critic may be 
puzzled to decide wbetber tbe text or tbe illustrations 
ougbt to be singled out for special praise, but be can- 
not besitate to pronounce tbe entire work a masterpiece. 



xxvi INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

Another illness, of a still more threatening cha- 
racter, prostrated him at a later period. This was the 
result of over- work, and consisted in total incapacity 
for mental exei*tion. For a considerahle time he could 
not concentrate his thoughts ; could neither write nor 
read ; even the perusal of a newspaper was beyond his 
power. Entire rest wrought a cure which, happily, 
was lasting as well as complete. 

In addition to the works named above, he wrote 
numerous articles for the Revue cle r Instruction Ruh- 
liqiiBy the Journal cles Dehats^ the Revue des Deux 
Mondes. These articles have been collected and pub- 
lished in volumes. A volume which attracted much 
attention was partly composed of articles which had 
appeared in the first of these journals, and it bore the 
title of " French Philosophers of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury." This work was an attack upon the official 
philosophy of the day, that rhetorical spiritualism 
w^hich had the advantage, in the eyes of the autho- 
rities, of not giving umbrage to the priests, and the 
drawback, in the opinion of thinkers, of slurring over, or 
of evading the difficulties which it professed to explain 
and remove. Against M. Cousin, in particular, M. 
Taine opened a battery of censure and ridicule. The 
opponents of the former applauded the attack ; his 
friends, like friends in general, doubtless relished it 
inwardly, while condemniiig it openly, for it was very 
clever and very telling ; and M. Cousin himself re- 
garded his adversary with more than a professional 
philosopher's antipathy 



INTROD UCTOR Y CHAPTER. xxvii 

Meanwhile M. Taine was steadily labouring at his 
most ambitions historical work, " The History of 
English Literature." It was the fruit of six years' 
close study. In 1861, and subsequently, he visited 
England with a view of reading in the British Museum, 
and of seeing the country and people face to face. 
The " l^otes " contained in this volume comprise the 
frequent observations of ten years. They were all 
revised after his last visit in 1871. Some are retained 
which would have appeared more applicable a fe^> 
years ago than they do now, but in M. Taine's opinioi . 
they are still substantially true, and represent perm? 
nent phases of our national life and character. 

Upon the publication of the " History of English 
Literature," in 1863, its author's reputation was vastly 
increased, and his rank among modern writers acknow- 
ledged to be very lofty. The work was the event of 
the day, and the illustration of the year. That it 
should have been singled out by a committee of the 
French Academy, and unanimously recommended as 
worthy of a special prize, was perfectly natural. The 
value of this special prize, which is conferred on none 
but historical works of undoubted merit, is £160, a 
recompense which renders the honour a substantial as 
well as an enviable one. At a meeting of the Academy, 
where it was proposed to confirm the recommenda- 
tion of the committee, Monseigneur Dupanloup, the 
Bishop of Orleans, rose and moved the non-confirma- 
tion of the report. He alleged as reasons for refusing 
to do honour to M. Taine's history, that the book was 



xxviii INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

impious and immoral; that its author had alleged 
" virtue and vice to be products like sugar and vitriol ;" 
that he had denied the freedom of the will ; that 
he had advocated pure fatalism, had depreciated the 
ecclesiastics of the Middle Ages, had eulogized the 
Puritans, had pointedly commended the English 
Prayer-Book, had shown himself a sceptic in philo- 
sophy and a heretic in religion. M. Cousin thought 
the opportunity a favourable one both for showing 
how entirely he had become reconciled to the Church, 
and for taking his revenge on his youthful assailant. 
He seconded the Bishop's motion in a speech re- 
echoing the Bishop's charges. The success of these 
notable men was almost secured beforehand. Their 
hearers the more readily believed all they were told, 
because they had not read the work against which the 
attack was skilfully directed. The reporter of the 
Committee, who ought to have defended the Com- 
mittee's choice, was only too ready to bow before the 
censure of the Bishop and the philosopher. Hence, 
this combined and ardent appeal to the worst pre- 
judices of an assembly never distinguished for true 
tolerance and genuine liberality of sentiment, and of 
which the majority remembered with satisfaction how, 
during the previous year, M. Littre's candidature for 
admission into their midst had been rejected, proved 
altogether irresistible, and the motion was carried. 
Since then the Academy has been materially changed 
in composition and spirit. M. Cousin has departed this 
life in the odour of sanctity. He atoned, long before 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. xxix 

his decease, for his youthful leaning towards intel- 
lectual freedom, by abjectly submitting to the most 
uncompromising dogmas of a powerful priesthood. 
His influence perished with him. He holds, and may 
continue to hold, a place among the literary idols of 
France, and will receive the more lip- worship because 
he is no longer believed in as an authority. The 
Bishop of Orleans has resigned his seat ; M. Littre 
is a member of the Academy. Is it rash to predict 
that the illustrious body which, on hearsay and wholly 
insufficient evidence, refused to acknowledge the real 
merits of M. Taine's important work will one day 
regard his accession to a place among them as an 
addition to their collective strength and glory ? 

Little remains to be said about M. Taine's personal 
career. For some time he held the post of literary 
examiner in the military school of St. Cyr. After- 
wards he was appointed professor of art and aesthetics 
in the Imperial Academy of the Fine Arts. He has 
travelled through Italy, and written an excellent ac- 
count of his observations. He has published several 
works rclatino^ to art in Greece, Italy, and the Low 
Countries. One of his recent works is a philosophical 
one of note on " The Intelligence." The mere enu- 
meration of these titles is a proof of his versatiHty. 
More rare still, is the circumstance that everything 
he has written is both readable and pregnant with 
matter for reflection. Indeed, all his writings have 
a flavour of their own which is very pleasant, a stamp 
of originality which is unmistakable. He always 



XXX INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

thinks for himself. He occupies a place apart among 
contemporary auth.ors. Nor does lie ever write at 
random, and without a special purpose. Every book 
or detached essay is designed to subserve the object 
of propagating his views respecting criticism, to ex- 
pound and illustrate a method of discussing literary 
works which, if not discovered by him, he has made 
his own by systematic use and skilful adaptation. 

II. 

A critic is commonly supposed to be a man who, 
having carefully studied certain subjects, is specially 
qualified for giving an opinion upon the way in which 
these subjects have been treated by an author, a 
painter, an architect, an orator. The critic may either 
announce his decision after having applied to the 
matter in hand certain fixed rules or canons, or else 
he may enumerate his own rules and express an inde- 
pendent judgment. In any case the critique is a 
reasoned or arbitrary opinion, and nothing more. It 
may be disputed, if the standard to which the critic 
appeals has not been fairly and adequately applied. 
It may be disregarded, if the personal opinion appears 
to be merely an individual crotchet. To expect that 
the result could ever be accepted as universally and 
implicitly as the demonstrations of an authority in the 
natural sciences, of a botanist and a zoologist, is what 
no critic of eminence, with one conspicuous exception, 
has hitherto ventured to do. 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. xxxi 

That exception is M. Taine. He believes that lie 
has succeeded in removing all ambiguity and fluctua- 
tion from critical judgments by following a particular 
method of procedure. He professes to have eliminated 
chance from ethical products, to have found a clue 
to the labyrinth of the mind. The ordinary saying 
that man is a creature of circumstances, he employs as 
a philosophical formula. The purport of his main con- 
tention and fundamental proposition is that man is the 
unconscious agent and manifestation of unseen forces. 
In his opinion, these forces may be measured, though 
they cannot be grasped ; may be classified, though they 
cannot be directly controlled. He considers it prac- 
ticable, by duly estimating and carefully determining 
their nature and effect, to explain why an author, artist, 
or architect produced a particular book, painting, or 
edifice ; why an age was distinguished for a particular 
form of literature, art, or architecture ; what was the 
mental history of past generations as exhibited in the 
writings or doings of individuals. In short, M. Taine 
deciphers the man in the age, and the age in the man, 
and becomes the historian of the human mind in 
depicting the events of a particular generation, and 
in exhibiting the share which the finished work of 
one era or race has had in moulding the work of the 
era which has succeeded, or the race which has dis- 
placed it. For him Raffaelle is no startling pheno- 
menon, and Shakespeare no inscrutable mystery. Nor 
has he any difficulty in explaining the reason why 
the Middle Age was succeeded by the Eevival, and 



xxxii INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

the R-evival by tlie Eeformation ; wliy England was 
transformed by the Revolution wbicb destroyed Divine 
Rigbt; wby France was emancipated from tbe yoke 
of feudalism by the Revolution wbicb replaced privilege 
by equality. 

These are lofty pretensions. It is because all his 
writings have been designed to maintain and advocate 
them, that they have all merited special attention. On 
more than one occasion I have endeavoured to expound 
his method and weigh it in the balance.* Many French 
and English critics of note have pronounced their 
opinion upon it, and have pointed out what they regard 
as its imperfections or mistakes. The result has been 
to elicit from him an exposition of it, which he desires 
should be accepted as an authoritative and a binding 
statement of his views and intentions. It is prefixed to 
the second edition of his ''Historical and Critical Essays." 
As this manifesto has not yet appeared in an English 
dress, and as it constitutes the case by which M. Taine 
would like to be judged by his readers and critics in 
England, as well as elsewhere, I shall proceed to trans- 
late it preparatory to offering any comments of my 
own upon his aims and performances : — 

" Several critics have done me the honour sometimes 
to combat, sometimes to approve of what they are 
pleased to call my system. I am by no means so pre- 

* See the following articles in the Westminster Review : — " The 
Critical Writings and Theory of 11. Taine," July, 1861; "Taine's 
History of English Literature," April, 1864 ; *• Taine's History o\ 
English Literature: Oontsmporary Writers," January,, 1865; •*H. 
Taine on Art and Italy," April, 1866. 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. xxxiii 

tentious as to have a system ; at most, I endeavour to 
follow a method. A system is an explanation of the 
whole, and indicates a work done; a method is a 
manner of working, and indicates a work to be done. 
My desire has been to labour in a certain sense and 
in a certain way — nothing more. The question is to 
learn whether this way is a good one. To do so it 
must be tried : if the reader will make the attempt, he 
will be able to judge for himself, "^"^i^jj^ace of refuting 
refutations, I shall sketch the profce?^ in"9!ispute ; those 
who shall have repeated it will learn for themselves 
whether it conducts to ^truths. 

"It is wholly compM»^^fir 4p)iii^li|!^'^p8^^^ '^l^^t moral 
matters, like physical thingsT^i^rarerlfepcwc/e/iCies and 
conditions. 

"I shall suppose that it is desired to verify this 
maxim, and measure its reach. Let the reader take 
for example some artist, learned man, or distinguished 
writer, a particular poet, novelist, and read his works, 
pen in hand. To read them properly, he will classify 
them in natural groups, and in each group he will 
distinguish the three distinct things called the person- 
ages or characters, the action or intrigue, the style or 
the manner of writing. Following the custom of every 
critic, he will note in each of these divisions, by a few 
brief and telling phrases, the salient particularities, the 
dominant traits, the qualities peculiar to the author. 
Arrived at the end of his first course, if he be somewhat 
practised in this work, he will see an involuntary 
phrase flow from his pen, one singularly powerful 
and significant, which will summarise all the operation, 
and will place before his eyes a certain kind of tact 
and of talent, a certain disposition of mind oi of soul, 



xxxiv INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

a certain array of likes and dislikes, of faculties and of 
failings, in short, a certain psychological state^ ruling 
and lasting, whicli is that of the author. Let him 
now repeat the same operation in the other portions 
of the same subject ; let him afterwards compare the 
three or four summaries which each of these partial 
analyses have produced; let him add to the author's 
writings, his life, I mean his conduct towards men, — 
his philosophy, that is to say, his manner of regarding 
the world, — ^his ethical and sesthetical code, that is to 
say, his general views about the good and the beautiful ; 
let him bring together all these small condensed phrases 
which are the concentrated essence of thousands of the 
remarks he has made, and of the hundreds of judg- 
ments he has passed. If these notations are precise, 
if he be accustomed to discern sentiments and faculties 
under the words which designate them, if the inner 
eye by which we sift and define in a moment the 
diversities of the moral being is sufficiently exercised 
and penetrating, he will observe that these seven or 
eight formulas depend the one upon the other, that the 
first being given, the others could not differ, that 
consequently the qualities they represent are inter- 
chained, that if one vary, the others vary proportion- 
ately, and that hence they compose a system like an 
organised body. JN^ot only will he have the vague 
sentiment of this mutual accord which harmonizes 
the diverse faculties of a mind, but also he will have 
the distinct perception of it ; he will be able to prove 
in logical fashion that a particular quality, violence 
or sobriety of imagination, oratorical or lyrical aptitude, 
ascertained as regards one point, must extend its ascend- 
ency over the rest. By continued reasoning, he will thus 
bind up the various inclinations of the man he examines 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER, xxxv 

tinder a small number of governing inclinations, whence 
they flow and by w^Mcli they are explained, and he 
will provide for himself the spectacle of the admirable 
necessities which unite among each other, the innu- 
merable, varied, entangled fibres of each human being. 
*' That is the simplest case. I shall now suppose 
that the reader wishes to make trial of this in a larger 
and more complex case, upon a large school, like that 
of the English or Spanish dramatists, the Florentine or 
Yenetian painters, upon an entire civilisation like that 
of ancient Eome, upon a race like the Semitic, even upon 
a distinct group of races like that of the Arj^an nations, 
and to take an example, upon a well-marked historic 
epoch, the age of Louis XIY. To do this it is necessary, 
in the first place, to have read and observed much ; and 
probably, out of all the observations, some general 
impression has remained in the reader's mind ; I mean 
to say, the vague sentiment of a badly-defined concord- 
ance between the heaps of worlds and of thoughts which 
have passed before his eyes. But I ask him to go 
farther, and by surer paths. In this, as in the pre- 
ceding case and in every accurate search, it is neces- 
sary, in the first place, to classify the facts, and to 
consider each class of facts apart : firstly, the three 
great works of human intelligence, religion, art, philo- 
sophy ; secondly, the two great works of human asso- 
ciation, the family and the State ; lastly, the three 
great material v/orks of human labour, industry, com- 
merce, and agriculture; and in each of these general 
groups the secondary groups into which they are sub- 
divided. Take but one of them, philosophy ; when the 
reader shall have studied the reigning doctrine from 
Descartes to Malebranche ; when after having noted the 
method, the theory of extension and of thought, the 



xxxvi INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

definition of God, of morality, and the rest, lie will 
clearly picture to himself the point of departure and 
the sort of spirit which, have determined the entire 
work; when he shall have given precision to his idea 
by keeping in sight the imaginative and riotous philo- 
sophy of the preceding century, the distinctive and 
binding philosophy of contemporary England, the 
experimental and sceptical philosophy of the following 
century, he will arrive at sifting out from the Erench 
philosophy of the seventeenth century a certain distinct 
tendency whence proceed, as from a source, its sub- 
missiveness and its independence, its theological poverty 
and its logical lucidity, its moral nobleness and its 
speculative aridity, its leaning towards mathematics 
and its disdain of experience ; on the one hand, that 
mixture of compromise and stiffness which foretells a 
race better fitted for pure reasoning than for general 
views ; on the other hand, that mixture of elevation 
and calmness which foretells an age less enthusiastic 
than correct. Should a similar operation now be per- 
formed upon the other contemporary portions of human 
intelligence and action, should the summaries be com- 
pared together wherein in a handy and portable fashion 
the substance of the work observed has been similarly 
deposited ; if, by that kind of chemistry which is 
termed psychological analysis, care be taken to recognise 
the ingredients of each extract, it will be discovered 
that elements of a like nature come together in the 
different phials ; that the same faculties and the same 
wants which have produced philosophy have produced 
religion and art ; that the man to whom this art, 
this philosophy, this religion address themselves was 
prepared by a monarchical society and drawing-room 
proprieties to taste and comprehend them ; that the 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. xxxvii 

stage, conversation, goodness, family manners, the liier- 
archy of tlie State, the docility of the subject, the noble 
domesticity of the great, the humble domesticity of the 
low-born, all the details of private or public life, com- 
bined together to fortify the reigning sentiments and 
faculties, and that not only the diverse parts of this 
civilisation, so large and so complex, vfere united by 
common dependencies, bjit also that the cause of these 
dependencies was the universal presence of certain 
aptitudes and of certain inclinations, always the same, 
disseminated under diverse figures in the different com- 
partments wherein the human metal was cast. Between 
an elm of Yersailles, a philosophical and religious argu- 
ment of Malebranche, one of Boileau's maxims in 
versification, one of Colbert's laws of hypothec, an ante- 
room compliment at Marly, a sentence of Bossuet on the 
royalty of Grod, the distance appears infinite and impass- 
able ; there is no apparent connection. The facts are so 
dissimilar that at first sight they are pronounced to be 
what they appear, that is to say, isolated and separated. 
But the facts communicate heticeen tJicmselves by the 
definitions of the groups in u'hich they arc comprised, like 
the waters in a basin by the summit of the heights 
whence they flow. Each of them is an act of that ideal 
and general man around whom are grouped all the 
inventions and all the peculiarities of the epoch ; the 
cause of each is some aptitude or inclination of the 
reigning model. The various inclinations or aptitudes 
of the central personage balance, harmonise, temper 
each other under some liking, or dominant faculty, 
because it is the same spirit and the same heart which 
have thought, prayed, imagined, and acted ; because it 
is the same general situation and the same innate 
nature which have fashioned and governed the separate 



xxxviii mrRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

and diverse works ; because it is tlie same seal wliicli is 
differently stamped on differing matters. None of these 
imprints can alter without leading to an alteration in 
the others, because if one change it is owing to a change 
in the seal. 

"A step remains to be taken. Till now, the con- 
nection of contemporaneous things was in question ; at 
present the connection between successive things must 
be considered. The reader has been able to prove that 
moral matters, like physical things, have their depen- 
dencies; at present he must prove that, like physical 
things, tbey have their conditions. 

"You have sought and found the definition of a 
group ; I mean that small, exact, and expressive phrase 
which encloses in its narrow compass the essential 
characters whence the others can be deduced. Let us 
here suppose that it designates those of our seventeenth 
century; compare it with those by which, you have 
designated tbe preceding epoch and the others more 
ancient of the same history in the same country ; search, 
now whether the diverse terms of this series do not con- 
tain some common element. One is to be found, tlie 
character and spirit peculiar to the race, transmitted from 
generation to generation ; tbe same through the changes 
of culture, the diversities of organisation, and the 
variety of products. This character and this spirit, 
once constituted, are found to be more or less disposed for 
discipline or personal independence ; more or less fitted 
for nice reasoning or poetical emotion ; more or less 
disposed to the religion of the conscience, or of logic, 
or of custom, or of the eyes. At a given moment, 
during a period, they produce a work ; and their 
nature, joined to that of their work, is the condition of 
the work which follows ; as in an organised body the 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. xxxix 

primitive temperament, joined to tlie anterior state, 
is the condition of the succeeding state. Here, as in 
the physical world, the condition is sufficient and neces- 
sary ; if it be present, the work cannot be wanting ; if 
it be absent, the work cannot appear. From the 
English character and from the despotism bequeathed 
by the Tudor s to the Stuarts proceeded the English 
Eevolution. From the French character and from the 
aristocratic anarchy bequeathed by the civil wars to 
the Bourbons proceeded the monarchy of Louis XI Y. 
To produce the superb flowering of the arts of design 
under Leo X. was required the precocious and pic- 
turesque Italian genius, with the prolonged reign of 
the energetic manners and the corporeal instincts of 
the Middle Ages. To produce in the first centuries 
of our era the astonishing growth of philosophies and 
mystical religions, the speculative aptitude of our 
Aryan races was required, at the same time as the 
crushing of the world, repressed under a despotism 
without outlet, and the enlargement of the mind, widened 
by the ruin of nationalities. Let the reader kindly 
make trial of this upon any one period ; if he starts 
from the texts, if he reads and judges for himself, if he 
methodically exhausts his subject, if he rises by degrees 
from the characters which govern the smaller groups 
up to those which govern the larger groups, if he is 
careful in constantly rectifying and determining his 
summaries, if he is accustomed to see clearly the 
qualities and the general situations which extend their 
empire over centuries and entire nations, he will be- 
come convinced that they depend upon anterior qualities 
and situations as general as themselves ; that the second 
being given the first must follow; that they play 
among them tlie great game of history ; that they 

d 



xl INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER, 

make or unmake civilisation by their disagreement or 
tkeir harmony ; that our little ephemeral life is but a 
wave upon their current, that in and by them we have 
action and being. At the end of a short time he will 
embrace with a look the whole which they govern ; he 
will no longer see them as abstract formulas, but as 
living forces mingled with things, everywhere present, 
everywhere operating, veritable divinities of the human 
world, which hold out hands downward to other powers 
that are masters of matter as they are of mind, to form 
together the invisible choir of which the old poets 
speak, which moves across things, and through which 
throbs the eternal universe. 

" It will be seen that what is in question here is a 
form of experiment similar to what scientific men per- 
form in physiology or in chemistry. In the one as in the 
other case, a man says to you, * Take that piece of 
matter, divide it such a way, practise upon it such and 
such operations, and in such an order ; you will arrive 
at ascertaining certain dependencies, and at disen- 
gaging a certain principle. I have done this, in thirty 
or forty cases, while choosing different circumstances.' 
A man's idea cannot be received or rejected till after 
counter-proof. It is no refutation to tell him, * Your 
method is bad, for it renders style rigid and unpleasant.' 
He will reply aloud, 'So much the worse for me.' 
Nor is it any more a refutation to say, 'I reject your 
forms of procedure ; for the doctrines to which they 
lead unsettle my moral convictions.' He will reply in 
a whisper, ' So much the worse for you.' Experience 
alone destroys experience ; for theological or senti- 
mental objections have no hold over a fact. Whether 
this fact be the formation of tissues observed through a 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER, xli 

microscope, an equiyalent figure proved by a scale, a 
eoncordance of faculties and of sentiments proved by 
criticism, its value is the same ; there is no other 
superior authority which can reject it at first sight and 
without previous control ; one is obliged, in order to dis- 
prove him, to repeat the operation which he has obtained. 
When a physiologist tells you that the anatomical ele- 
ments are formed by spontaneous generation in the 
living individual, and that the living individual is an 
aggregation of elementary individuals, each endowed 
with a personal and distinct life, do you think yourself 
entitled to protest in the name of the theological 
dogma of the creation or of the ethical dogma of the 
human personality? Objections of this sort which 
could be made during the Middle Ages cannot be made 
at the present day respecting any science, in history 
any more than in physiology and chemistry, since the 
right of regulating human consciences has wholly 
passed to the side of experience, and since precepts or 
doctrines, instead of authorising observation, receive 
from it all their credit. Besides, it is easy to see that 
objections of this species all proceed from a mistake, 
and that the adversary is unwittingly the dupe of 
phrases. He reproaches you with considering national 
characters and general situations as tha sole great 
forces in history, and he starts from that to decide that 
you suppress the individual. He forgets that these 
great forces are but the sum of the tendencies and 
aptitudes of individuals, that our general terms are 
collective expressions which bring together under a 
single glance twenty or thirty millions of souls inclined 
and acting in the same direction, that when an hundred 
men move a wheel, the total force which displaces the 
wheel is but the sum of the forces of these hundred 



; xlii INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

men, and that individuals exist and operate as well in 
a people, an age, or a race, as the component nnits in 
an addition of which, the total figure is alone written 
down. In like manner again, he reproaches you with 
transforming man into a machine, making him the sub- 
ject of some interior machinery, bringing him under 
the bondage of great surrounding pressure, denying to 
him independent and free personality, discouraging 
our efforts by informing ns that we are constrained 
and led without and within by forces which we have 
not made and to which we must submit. He forgets 
what the individual soul is, as he forgot a moment since 
what an historical force was ; he separates the word 
from the thing ; he empties and puts it aside as a being 
efficacious and distinct. He ceases to see in the indi- 
vidual soul, as he did in the historical force, the ele- 
ments which compose it, a moment since the individuals 
of which the historical force is but the sum, at present 
the faculties and tendencies of which the individual 
mind is but the whole. He does not observe that the 
fundamental aptitudes and tendencies of a mind per- 
tain to it, that those it appropriates in the general situa- 
tion or in the national character are, or become, personal 
to it in the foremost place, that when acting through 
them it is doing so by itself, with its own force, spon- 
taneously, with complete initiative, with full responsi- 
bility, and that the artifice of analysis by means of 
which its principal motors are distinguished, the suc- 
cessive gearings and the distribution of its primitive 
movement, do not hinder the whole, which is itself, 
taking from it its impulse and its course — to wit, its 
energy and its effort. Nor does he observe that re- 
searches of this kind, very far from discouraging man 
by showing him his bondage, have the effect of in- 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. xllli 

creasing his hopes, by augmenting his power ; that they 
terminate like the physical sciences in establishing the 
constant dependencies between facts ; that the discovery 
of these dependencies in the physical sciences has fur- 
nished man with the means of foreseeing and modifying 
up to a certain point natural events ; that an analogous 
discovery in ethical science ought to supply man with 
the means of foreseeing and modifying up to a certain 
point historical events. For we shall become all the 
more masters of our destiny when we shall dis- 
cern more exactly the common ties of things. When 
we have arrived at knowing the sufficient and necessary 
condition of a fact, the condition of that condition, 
and so on, we shall have before our eyes a chain of 
data, in which to displace one link will suffice to dis- 
place those which follow ; so that the last, though 
situated beyond the sphere of our action, will submit 
themselves by counter-effect as soon as one of the pre- 
ceding ones comes within our reach. The whole secret 
of our practical progress, during three hundred years, 
is embraced therein ;* we have separated and defined 
couples of facts so bound together that when the first 
appears the second never fails to follow, whence it 
occurs that in acting directly on the first we can act 
indirectly on the second. It is in this manner that 
accrued knowledge increases power, and the manifest 
consequence is that in ethical sciences, as in physical 
sciences, fruitful research is that which, discerning the 
couples — to wit, the conditions and the dependencies y 
sometimes permits the hand of man to interpose in the 
great mechanism, to shift or put right some small piece 
of machinery a piece light enough to be moved by 

* See Mj.-, J. S. JMili's admiraljlo ** Logic,'' especially his theory of 
Induction. 



xliv INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

man's hand, but so important tliat its displacemt '^- 
smootli movement will lead to a mighty change in the 
working of the machine, and to employ it altogetJier, 
wherever it works, here in nature, there in history, to 
the profit of the intelligent insect by which the economy 
of its structure shall have been discovered. 

"It is with this aim, and in this sense, that history is 
being transformed to day ; it is by this sort of labour 
that from a simple narrative it can become a science, 
and determine laws after having set forth facts. Already 
we can perceive several of these laws, all very exact 
and very general, and corresponding to those which 
have been found in the sciences of living bodies. In 
that the philosophy of human history repeats, like a 
faithful image, the philosophy of natural history. 
Naturalists have observed that an animal's various 
organs depend the one upon the other — that, for 
example, the teeth, the stomach, the feet, the instincts, 
and many other given quantities, vary together accord- 
ing to a fixed connection, so much so that the trans- 
formation of one of them compels a corresponding 
transformation in the rest.* In the same way historians 
can observe that the various aptitudes and inclinations 
of an individual, of a race, of an epoch, are joined the 
one to the other in such a manner that the alteration 
of one of these given quantities, noticed in a neigh- 
bouring individual, in a group at hand, in a preceding 
or succeeding epoch, determines in them a proportional 
alteration of all the system. JSTaturalists have ascer- 
tained that the exaggerated development of an organ 
in an animal, like the kangaroo or the bat, leads to the 
impoverishment or the diminution of the correspond- 

* 'l"he Connection of Characters, Cuvier's law. See the developmenta 
given hy Richard Owen. 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER, xlv 

S'^^' gans.* In like manner, historians can ascertain 
ho"^ the extraordinary developement of one faculty, like 
moral' aptitude in Teutonic races, or the metaphysical 
and i^eligious aptitude of the Hindoos, leads in these 
races to the weakening of the opposite faculties. 
Naturalists have proved that, among the characters of 
an animal or vegetable group, the one is subordinate, 
variable, sometimes weakened, sometimes absent ; the 
others, on the contrary, like the structure or concentric 
layers of a plant, or the organisation around a chain of 
vertebrae in an animal, preponderate and determine all 
the plan of its economy. In like manner historians 
can prove that among the characters of a group, or of 
a human individual, the one is subordinate and neces- 
sary, the others like the preponderating presence of 
images or of ideas, or, better still, the greater or lesser 
aptitude for more or less general conceptions, dominate 
and fix beforehand the direction of his life and the 
nature of his inventions. f Naturalists show that in a 
class, or even a branch of the animal kingdom, the 
same plan of organisation is found in all the species ; 
that the dog's paw, the horse's leg, the bat's wing, the 
man's arm, the whale's fin, are the same anatomical 
given quantity fitted by some contraction or partial 
extension to the difierent uses. By a similar method 
historians can show that as regards the same artist, 
in the same school, in the same age, of the same 
race, personages the most opposite as to condition, sex, 
education, character, all represent a common type — to 
wit, a nucleus of faculties and primitive aptitudes which, 
diversely contracted, combined, enlarged, supply the 

* G. Saint-Hilaire's Law of Organic Counterbalances, 
t Rnlo as to the subordination of characters, which is the principle 
of classifications in Botany and in Zoology. 



xlvi INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

innumerable diversities of the group.* Naturalists 
establish that in a living species the individuals which 
are the best developed and reproduce themselves the 
most surely, are those which a peculiarity of structure 
best adapts to ambient circumstances; that in the 
others inverse qualities produce inverse effects ; that the 
natural course of things thus leads to incessant elimina- 
tions and gradual improvements ; that this blind pre- 
ference and dislike operate as a voluntary selection ; 
that ISTature thus chooses in each locality to give being 
and empire to the species best suited for the locality. 
Bj^ analogous observation and reasoning, historians can 
establish that, in any one human group, the individuals 
which attain the highest authority and the largest 
development are those whereof the aptitudes and the 
inclinations best correspond to those of their group ; 
that the moral position, like the physical position, 
operates upon each individual by continuous excitations 
and repressions ; that it renders the one abortive and 
makes the others bud in proportion to the concordance 
or disagreement which occurs between them and it ; 
that this blind travail is a selection also, and that, by a 
series of imperceptible formations and deformations, the 
ascendency of the position brings on the scene of history 
artists, philosophers, religious reformers, politicians, 
capable of interpreting or accomplishing the thought of 
their age and of their race, as it brings on the scene of 
IsTature species of animals and of plants, the best fitted 
for accommodating themselves to their climate and 
their soil.f Many other analogies between natural 
and human history might be enumerated. This is 

* G-. Saint-Hilairo's theory of aiialog-iios and unity of composition. 
Roe the developments made hy Kichard Owen, 
t Darwin's principle of Natural Selection- 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER, xlvii 

because their two subjects are similar. In the ono, a7?d 
in tbe otber, natural groups are operated on — to wit, 
individuals constructed after a common type, divisible 
in families, in kinds, and in species. In tbe one and 
in the other, the object is living — to wit, subjected to a 
spontaneous and continued transformation. In the one 
and in the other, the original form is hereditary, and 
the acquired form is transmitted in part and slowly by 
inheritance. In the one and in the other, the organised 
molecule is not developed save under the influence of 
its position. In the one and in the other, each state of 
the organised being has the twofold condition of the 
previous state and the general tendency of the type. 
By all these developments the human animal is a con- 
tinuation of the brute ; for the human faculties have 
their root in the life of the brain, as well the superior 
ones whereof man enjoys the privilege, as the inferior 
of which he has not the privilege ; and by this hold the 
organic lawG extend their empire even to the separate 
domain on the threshold of which natural sciences halt, 
to permit ethical sciences to rule. It follows from this 
that a career similar to that of the natural sciences is 
open to the ethical sciences ; that history, the last comer, 
can discover laws like its elders; that it can, like 
them and within its province, govern the conceptions, 
and guide the efforts of men ; that, by a train of well- 
conducted researches, it will end by determining the 
conditions of great human events — to wit, the circum- 
stances essential to the appearance, to the duration, 
or the downfall of various forms of associations, of 
thought, and of action. Such is the field open to it ; 
it has no limit ; in a domain like that all the efforts of a 
single man can only be^-r it forward a pace or two ; he 
observes one small corner, then another ; from time to 



xlviii INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

time lie stops to point out the way lie considers tho 
shortest and tlie most certain. This is all I have 
endeavoured to do ; the keenest pleasure of a toiling 
spirit lies in the thought of the work which others will 
perform later." 

Having permitted M. Taine to speak for himself, I 
m.ay now offer an objection to his method which ap- 
pears to me so serious as to be almost fatal. It relates 
to the fundamental difference between the positions 
occupied by the botanist and zoologist, and the critic and 
historian. The former have no personal and national 
bias in favour of the results of their observations. They 
may prefer, as a matter of taste, one plant or one 
animal to another, but this does not interfere in the 
slightest degree with the manner in which they classify 
and explain either. They do not care whether a group 
of plants, or of animals, exists in a particular country 
and under particular conditions. When a French- 
man examines a flower or dissects a bat, he thinks 
nothing about the spot on which the flower grew or 
the bat was produced. But when a Frenchman deals 
with an author or artist of a foreign nation, he does 
not forget, nor will he forget until the millennium 
shall arrive and human nature shall be transmogrified, 
that he is a Frenchman, and that the author or artist is 
a foreigner. Intentionally or unconsciously, he judges 
the eloquence, the style, the diction, the talent, and the 
works of the foreigner by a French standard and from a 
French point of view. M. Taine himself is a proof of thi?.. 
No foreigner has written more acutely and instructively 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. xlix 

about England and the English than he has done, yet, 
while the result is admired, the remark is made, either 
aloud or in a whisper : " Yery wonderful, certainly, 
considering that M. Taine is a Frenchman." Lan- 
guage, that living expression of a nation's mind, is in 
its essence a sealed book to him who is not one of 
the nation. There is a flavour in words which a 
native of the land wherein they are current can alone 
detect and enjoy. No one but the native of an Eng- 
lish-speaking country can ever enter into full com- 
munion with the spirit of Shakespeare ; no one but 
a Frenchman can ever perfectly appreciate all that 
is grand in Corneille, pathetic in Racine, pointed in 
Pascal, graceful in Madame Sevigne, easy and neat in 
Yoltaire ; no one but an Italian can ever be adequately 
impressed by the might and mystery of Dante ; no one 
but a Spaniard can heartily appreciate Cervantes; no 
one but a German can thoroughly explore and admire 
the masterpieces of Groethe. Even with all his mastery 
over our tongue, it is doubtful whether M. Taine can 
fully enjoy the English of Thackeray, simply as En- 
glish, or detect the subtle grace and point which impart 
an inexpressible charm to the English of Hawthorne. 
We know that he rates English painting very low ; 
he considers it false art, an appeal to the mind rather 
than to the eyes. But this opinion is merely due to 
his entertaining a particular view of art. When ana- 
lysed, his decision amounts to this r ** Your painting 
is not what I call art ; it gives me no pleasure ; conse- 
quently it is a failure." He says that Gainsborough's 



1 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

** * Blue Boy ' already possesses tlie expressive and 
wliolly modern ptysiognomy by wticli a work, falling 
within tlie painter's province, oversteps tlie limits of 
painting/* He thinks it a fatal defect in tlie works 
of Hogartli, of Reynolds, of Sir Edwin Landseer, that 
they tell a story which the beholder is expected to 
appreciate quite as much as the colouring and the 
drawing. To tell a story in colours is surely no crime, 
even if it be treason to art ; the natural reflection being. 
Then so much the worse for the art which can be so 
easily betrayed. When perusing his criticisms upon 
English painters, the wider applicability of what he says 
in defence of Raffaelle against the disparaging comments 
of Mr. Ruskin becomes apparent : " It is easy to con- 
demn a painter, even a very great one, when something 
is required of him whereof he never dreamt " (p. 341). 
Hardly less curious than the sweeping charge brought 
against English painters, is the assumption that Mr. 
Ruskin is the accepted exponent of the true English 
theory of painting. For a time some young artists 
strove to give practical effect to Mr. Ruskin's theories ; 
but the attempt had to be abandoned in despair, for the 
theories were so often altered, that, despite their author 
maintaining he was never more consistent than when, 
to all appearance, he enumerated contradictory pro- 
positions, no ordinary person could succeed in apply- 
ing them in. a uniform and rational manner. So far 
from Mr. Ruskin being the supreme authority in 
England on the subject of the great Masters, the ob- 
jection which M. Taine offers to his strictures would 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER, li 

find general acceptance among Englisli artists and 
critics. The trutli is, however, that M. Taine views 
art from a purely French point of view ; he in- 
terprets it in accordance with French canons. I do not 
blame him for this. Indeed, he cannot act otherwise. 
But how can he note " psychological states," mark the 
"dependencies and conditions" which affect literary, 
artistic, or historical productions, if he, starts with a set 
of foregone conclusions, which are alike personal and 
national, which have no universal sanction, and will 
not command universal respect ? The case of a fauna 
or flora is so different, as to be palpable to the most 
superficial observer. The system which Linnaeus applied 
to botany and Cuvier to natural history are systems 
of general applicability. They can be employed in 
the true scientific spirit, and made to yield genuine 
scientific results. 

After examining the results of M. Taine's method, 
as applied by him to men of note in the world of art 
and letters, I do not find that these are so conclusive as 
to reflect glory upon the method itself His volume 
about Lafontaine, which contains much exquisite writ- 
ing, many shrewd remarks, and displays much dialec- 
tical skill, merely shows that Lafontaine was a poet. 
The " Essay on Livy " is designed to prove that Livy 
was an "oratorical historian." The explanation of 
Shakespeare is that he had "a complete imagina- 
tion ; all his genius lies in that phrase," This is 
quite as satisfactory as M. Victor Hugo's explanation 
that " Shakespeare was his intellectual twin brother ;" 



lii INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

but it leaves the matter where it was, and is but 
M. Taine's way of saying, what other critics have 
said before him, that the great poet was a man 
of genius. Indeed, the words talent and genius 
when properly applied and suitably qualified, serve in 
reality as formulas like those which M. Taine educes 
by his method. For his particular method itself, M. 
Taine exhibits what appears to be a disproportionate 
affection. He acts with regard to-' it as Shelley 
said authors frequently do, resembling mothers in 
preferring " the children who have given th^n most 
trouble." Yet he is noteworthy as a writer not in 
consequence, but in spite, of his method. Strip off 
everything relating to it in his several works, and the 
works themselves will continue to attract and impress ; 
they will still reflect the beauties of his own mind, and 
be radiant with the splendours of his brilliant style. 
Of the method itself, I may say what Condillac said of 
rules ; like the parapet of a bridge, it may hinder a 
person from falling into the river, but will not help 
him on his way. M. Taine no more requires it to 
sustain him than Byron required bladders or corks, to 
buoy him up when he entered the water, after he had 
demonstrated his powers by swimming across the 
Hellespont. 

The expectation which he has of ultimately using 
history for the purpose of framing laws, and so giving 
to it a place among the natural sciences, is an expecta- 
tion which no one can entertain who disagrees with him 
as to first principles, who contemplates the universe in a 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. liii 

cLiiFerent fasliion, wlio puts a different interpretatiomipon 
tlie word cause. According to him a cause is a fact ; in 
my opinion it is a figure of speech. He thinks that a 
fact can be found of such a kind that from it may he 
deduced the nature, the relations, and changes of other 
facts, and that this dominant and generative &ct is 
the cause of the others ; I regard the relations of cause 
and effect simply as sequences. All that we can know 
or note is that the one follows the other, and to call 
the one the cause of the other is merely another way 
of expressing this succession of continuity. Where 
he detects " dependencies and conditions," I merely 
perceive successions and appearances. Where he dis- 
cerns laws, I perceive nothing but explanations, and 
explanations, too, of the case as put by him. With him 
I agree in thinking that the result of a closer observation 
and more careful estimate of facts will be to render both 
criticism and history more exact and trustworthy. But, 
after all, the individual critic and historian will an- 
nounce his individual opinion. He will have no right 
to demand a hearing on any other ground than mas- 
tery of the subject and freedom from obvious and undue 
bias. He will, if endowed with M. Taine's industry, 
learning, skill in grouping facts, power in stating 
opinions, talent in manipulating words, be regarded, 
as M. Taine is deservedly regarded, as a master of his 
craft, as an authority in his sphere. 

Yet, even if his philosophical views should be esta- 
blished beyond dispute, an insuperable difficulty will 
remain. To interpret the individual, or a course of 



liv INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

historical events, after his fashion would require an 
investigator so entirely impersonal as to be almost 
superhuman. A man who had no national leanings or 
private sympathies might possibly deal with human 
beings and their literary, artistic, or historical concerns 
in the same scientific fashion that a physiologist deals 
with human crania, and a botanist with plants and 
fiowers. So long, however, as it remains true that 
"there is a great deal of human nature in man,'' so 
long will the efforts of the profoundest thinkers and 
most brilKant writers fail to elevate and alter history 
and criticism to such an extent and in such a way as to 
make of them sciences fitted to rank in precision and 
universality with the recognised natural sciences. 



in. 



Inability to advocate all M.- Taine's pretensions does 
not imply a want of admiration for what he has per- 
formed. He is greater than his method. His own 
personality is too marked to be concealed under any 
formula, however abstract ; his powers are too rare to 
fail to extort the admiration of those who may differ the 
most from him on purely speculative points. His cha- 
racteristic is a passion for facts ; his excellence consists 
in the skill with which he can turn his facts to the 
best account. He has a keen appreciation of beauty in 
every form ; he can convey his impressions to a reader 
in language of singular felicity. He requires the aid 
of no method to enunciate conclusions which are very 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. Iv 

plausible and often very j ust . His j udgments are formed 
on so complete an array of evidence, and with sucL. an 
unquestionable desire to be impartial, tbat tbey deserve 
to be treated with respect, even when they cannot be 
implicitly accepted. 

In his '^JN'otes on England," as in all his works, there 
is no lack of theories which may be called in question, 
of explanations which are sometimes partial and one- 
sided, of general views based upon insufficient data. 
He is emphatic in connecting drunkenness in this 
country with the English climate, and his theory of 
the race leads him to maintain that the English 
people, living in a murky air and beneath unkindly 
skies, must have an inordinate fondness for strong 
drinks. The truth is, the vice of drunkenness, which 
is one of the curses of the United Kingdom, is the curse 
also of the United States, of Canada, of Australia, 
where the sky is as bright as in France, where the air 
is as dry and exhilarating,, where the temperature 
is never less agreeable, and is often more genial. 
But in these countries, as in ours till recently, strong 
drinks are cheap, and wine is dear; if wine were 
everywhere as cheap as it is in France, there might 
not be less drunkenness, but it would be of a less 
brutal type than that which shocked M. Taine. He 
made his first observations at a time when heavy 
duties imposed upon light wines gave to the artifici- 
ally strengthened wines of Spain and Portugal the vir- 
tual monopoly of the market. He says : '* Their com- 
mon wines, port, sherry, very hot, very spirituous, are 

e 



Ivi INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

loaded with brandy in addition ; this mixture deprives 
them of delicacy, yet if they were pure the English 
would consider them insipid; our Bordeaux wines, 
and even our Burgundies, are too light for them" 
(pp. 57, 58). Since this was written the tariff has been 
altered, the result being that, for one glass of light 
wine drunk then, a bottle is drunk now. Moreover, no 
better recommendation can be given to sherry at the 
present day than to affirm that it is a natural wine, 
and is wholly unfortified by brandy. The Custom- 
House returns prove the former assertion ; the adver- 
tisements of wine-merchants uphold the latter. 

More than once M. Taine gives as an explanation of 
the rich acting in a particular way, that they wish to 
escape ennui; this, he maintains, is one of the causes 
of the hospitality they dispense. However, neither the 
word nor the thing is known in this country. A person 
may be "bored," even "bored to death;'* but this is 
very different. To be bored is to be oppressed by 
something of which there is a desire to get rid ; to feel 
ennui is to restlessly long for something which cannot 
readily be procured. Indeed, I believe ennui to be 
simply a pestilent, yet imaginary disease, engendered 
by a word, which in France is commonly made the 
convenient excuse for ladies falKng passionately in love 
with the wrong gentlemen and for gentlemen loving 
their neighbours' wives too well. It is as much a 
figment of the imagination as the "spleen," which the 
French insist is a malady peculiar to this country, 
but from which no English man, woman, or child has 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER, Ivii 

been known to suffer for a century, from whicli no 
native of Scotland was ever known to suffer at all, 
and which no native of Ireland can understand. The 
"spleen" departed from the southern part of the island 
along with its fashionable companion malady, " the 
vapours," but it seems to have destroyed its companion 
during the passage across the channel, and to have 
arrived in France alone. 

Other matters of detail might be noticed and cor- 
rected. When it is said, for instance (p. 113), that; 
the word " governor," as familiarly used by English 
boys, is a token of the position of authority which their 
father occupies in his house, this exemplifies one of 
those rapid generalisations which are due to an im- 
perfect apprehension of the facts. Had M. Taine 
known that the word is a slang one borrowed from 
the poorer classes, that it has not been in use longer 
than thirty years, and that it is already becoming 
obsolete, he would hardly have' cited it as confirmatory 
of his theory. !N^or ought he to have chosen the case 
of a brutal parent whose consumptive son was afraid to 
return home to die without his father's permission, as 
being in any respect more typical of English family rela- 
tions than the well-known instance of the red-haired 
chambermaid seen bv a traveller at a hotel in France, as 
being indicative of the fact which he noted, that all the 
women of the country had red hair. Generally, how- 
ever, when M. Taine records his own observations, he 
is alike acute and correct. Information given him by 
inexcusably ignorant persons appears to have misled 



Iviii INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

him wlien lie errs tlie most notably. Tlius his in- 
formant who told him (p. 241) that medical men are not 
created peers because "no man who has held .out 
his hands for guineas could take his place among 
peers of the realm," must have been strangely un- 
acquainted with the fact known to every schoolboy 
that barristers not only take guineas, but accept them 
willingly, and that the more guineas they receive, owing 
to the increase of their practice, the better are their 
prospects of a seat on the woolsack and elevation to the 
peerage. Moreover, at least one member of the House 
of Lords entered it not many years ago solely because, 
|j as a banker, he had handled the money of his customers 

so judiciously as to have accumulated an enormous 
fortune. After all, however, these slips, and others 
which the well-informed reader will readily detect, 
are comparatively trivial blemishes. In estimating 
the work as a whole, it would be well to exchange, 
what Chateaubriand called the petty and meagre 
criticism of defects, for the comprehensive and pro- 
lific criticism of beauties. These *' Notes on Eng- 
land " are really of first-rate quality ; they form 
an admirable picture of what is truly distinctive and 
noteworthy. M. Taine approaches so closely to the 
ideal intelligent foreigner whose advent is so often 
proclaimed, but whose presence in the flesh we never 
enjoy; his general tone is so excellent and his endea- 
vour to be fair so conspicuous ; his qualifications are 
so exceptional and his actual achievements give him 
so clear a title to our esteem; he is so singularly free 



'INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. lix 

from the sins whicli beset Hs co-imtrymen wlio retail 
their experience after having sojourned in this country; 
he is so sympathetic without stooping to flattery, and 
so candid without lapsing into discourtesy ; he is, in 
short, such a model traveller, such an acute observer, 
such a graphic and an artistic narrator, that he merits, 
what he will doubtless receive, a cordial welcome from 
all who enjoy reading the opinions of a genial and 
capable foreign writer upon the social life, the domestic 
arrangements, the religious sentiments, and the poli- 
tical constitution of this country. 

W. R Rae. 



BOULOGISE TO LONDON BRIDGE. 

TT is eleven o'clock; Boulogne recedes, and lessens 
-*- upon tlie horizon. The vessels in the harbour, the 
slender masts are first merged in the vague obscurity; 
presently the lights diminish, and soon appear nothing 
more on the verge of the sky than a heap of pale stars. 
This is a strange and profound sensation ; the sea is 
still, and a motionless mist broods over it. All has 
vanished ; alone at the horizon a revolving light from 
time to time flings its reflection over the passing wave. 
It seems as if we were entering the kingdom of silence 
and of vacancy, the colourless and shapeless world of 
things which are not. Darkness, vast and vague, en- 
compasseth us. The ship enters, and becomes lost in 
it. But a moment ago could still be descried, afar 
ofi*, from the side of the stern, an uncertain fringe, the 
distant land ; now, around the vessel, there is nothing 
but moving blackness. Thus engulfed, it still makes 
progress, with sure instinct, and opens up an entrance 
into the unseen. Like a laborious insect, it indefati- 
gably moves its great iron limbs, and raises around its 
keel vague phosphorescent appearances. They shine 
with the changing reflection of opal and mother-of- 
pearl. One follows their long undulation, which keeps 



2 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

rising, falling, and developing its soft clearness. Va- 
riegated diamonds, bounding pearls turn in its hollows, 
and its fringe of foam makes a border of dead silver, 
a wrought, winding, waving frame to the nocturnal 
mirror. 

The sun rose half an hour ago, but one does not 
see it ; there is only a feeble brightening in the east ; 
all the remainder is covered with clouds. Towards the 
east, the sea, as far as the eye can reach, streaks with 
its distinct line the clear and calm horizon. Right and 
left of the boat, a slight distant strip rises from the 
sea; it is land, and through the mist one begins to 
distinguish its greenish indentation. "We advance ; but 
in this enormous estuary, the land, so flat and small, 
appears but a mass of mud ; humidity bathes the 
colours ; all the tones are diluted, washed out ; you 
would take it for a pale water-colour over which a 
child, with its finger, has drawn drops of water. Upon 
the right the coast approaches ; this is now the real 
English landscape which I saw between Newhaven 
and London last year. Rising ground of a dull green, 
divided by hedges, strewn with isolated trees ; one 
enclosed pasturage, then another, then another besides, 
and untended cattle, penned up permanently ; a 
Belgium less flat and less uniform than the other, 
gleaming in the sun, but very dismal and very com- 
monplace ; the sky is showery, and this sky is fre- 
quently so. The river is enormous, but dirty, dotted 
wdth wan and false tints ; turned back by the rising 
tide, it oscillates between mountains of mud, which in 
turn it covers and quits ; under the pestiferous vapour 
its tiny waves have a lugubrious aspect : thus it rolls 
along, livid and muddj^, but useful ; it is a worker 



BOULOGNE TO LONDON BRLDGE. 3 

and porter unique of its kind. Ships now begin to 
move in bands along its back, tbe most of tbem laden, 
large, small, of every form and every size, and the 
sailors climbing in the rigging resemble busy spiders. 

Conversation with an Englishman of the middle 
class, son of a merchant, I should suppose ; he does 
not know French, German, or Italian ; he is not alto- 
gether a gentleman. Twenty-five years of age ; sneer- 
ing, decided, incisive face ; he has made, for his amuse- 
ment and instruction, a trip lasting twelve months, and 
is returning from India and from Australia. Forty 
thousand miles in all. He says, " To understand 
the people, they must be seen.'' He is from Liverpool. 
A family that does not keep a carriage may live com- 
fortably there upon three or four hundred pounds 
sterling. One must marry, that is a matter of 
course ; he hopes to be married before two or three 
years are over. It is better, however, to remain a 
bachelor, if one does not meet the person with whom 
one desires to pass one's whole life. " But one 
always meets with her ; the only thing is not to let the 
chance slip." He has met the proper person more 
than once when quite a young man ; but then he was 
not rich enough, ; at present, being " independent," he 
will try again. A dowry is unnecessary. It is 
natural, and even pleasant, to undertake the charge of 
a portionless wife and of a famil3^ *' If your wife is 
good, and you love her, she is well worth that." 

It is clear to me that their happiness consists in being 
at home at six in the evening, with a pleasing, attached 
wife, having four or five children on their knees, and 
respectful domestics. In the boat there is a family 
of four children, of whom the eldest is four and a half, 
and the mother twenty-three or twenty-four. At the 



4 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

sea-side, on the beach, I have often seen entire broods, 
the father of the family at their head ; it is not rare 
to meet with children who mount in steps from the 
baby at the breast up to the girl of eighteen. The 
parents do not feel themselves either over-burdened or 
embarrassed. According to this Englishman, they owe 
nothing but education to their children ; the daughters 
marry without a dowry, the sons shift for themselves. 
I know a solicitor who makes much money and spends 
it all, except £300 or £400 a year, with which he 
insures his life in the names of his children ; at each 
new arrival, there is a fresh policy of £2,000, payable 
to the child at its father's death. In this way the 
child is provided for, and besides commerce, industry 
supplies him with a quantity of outlets which are 
denied to a young Frenchman. 

Of all the countries this Englishman has seen, 
England is the most moral. Still, in his opinion, the 
national evil is " the absence of morality." In con- 
sequence he judges France after the English fashion. 
" The women are badly brought up there, do not read 
the Bible, are too fond of balls, occupy themselves 
wholly with dress. The men frequent cafes and keep 
mistresses, hence so many unfortunate households. 
This is the result not of race, but of education. 
French women in England, seriously brought up in 
English fashion, make very good wives here.'' " Is 
everything good in your country P " " No ; the 
national and horrible vice is drunkenness. A man 
who earns 20s. a week drinks ten of them. Add to 
this improvidence, stoppage of work, and poverty." 
" But in cases of distress you have the poor-houses, 
the workhouses ? " ^' They will not go to them, they 
prefer to fast, to die of hunger." " Why ? " '' For 



BOULOGNE TO LONDON BRLDGE. 5 

three reasons. Because they wish to drink at their 
ease. Because they hate being shut up. Because 
there are formalities ; they must prove that they belong 
to the parish, but the most of them do not know where 
they were born, or find it too difficult to procure the 
necessary papers." He is a talkative fellow devoid of 
affected seriousness. Two other Englishmen with whom 
I conversed in the boat are like unto him. I have always 
found this disposition among the English ; probably if 
they have the contrary reputation, it is because when 
in a foreign country and obliged to speak another lan- 
guage, they are silent through bashfulness, and keep 
watch in order not to commit themselves. Speak 
English imperfectly with a bad accent, they are no 
longer uneasy, they feel themselves your superiors. If 
you put a question to them politely, gently, or ask 
them to do you a small service, they are complying 
and even officious. I discovered this twenty times 
last year in London and everywhere else. 

Other figures in the boat. Two young couples who 
remain on deck covered with wrappings under um- 
brellas. A long downpour has begun ; they remain 
seated ; in the end they were drenched like ducks. 
This was in order that husband and wife should not be 
separated by going below to the cabins. Another 
young wife suffered much from sea- sickness ; her hus- 
band, who had the look of a merchant's clerk, took 
her in his arms, supported, tried to read to her, tended 
her with a freedom and expression of infinite tender- 
ness. Two young girls of fifteen and sixteen, who 
speak German and French exceedingly well and 
without accent, large restless eyes, large white teeth ; 
they chatter and laugh with perfect unconstraint, 
with admirable petulance of friendly gaiety ; not the 



6 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

slightest trace of coquetry, none of our nice little 
tricks which, have been learned and done on purpose ; 
they never think about the onlookers. A lady of 
forty in spectacles beside her husband, in a worn-out 
dress, with relics of feminine ornaments, extraordinary 
teeth in the style of tusks, very serious and raost 
ludicrous ; a Frenchwoman, even middle-aged, never 
forgets to adjust herself — to arrange her dress. Patience 
and phlegm, of a tall dry Englishman, who has not 
moved from the seat, has taken but a single turn, 
who has spoken to no one, who suffices to himself. As 
a contrast, three Frenchmen, who put random ques- 
tions, make hap-hazard assertions, grow impatient, 
gesticulate, and make puns or something akin to them, 
appeared to me pleasant fellows. 

Gradually the clouds have disappeared and the sky is 
radiant. Right and left we pass small country houses, 
pretty, clean, and freshly painted. Green grass is 
seen appearing at the horizon, here and there large 
trees well- placed and well- grouped. Gravesend on the 
left heaps its brown houses around a blueish steeple. 
Vessels, warehouses, increase in number. One feels 
that one is approaching a great city. The small 
landing-stages project fifty paces into the river over 
the shining mud which the fallen tide leaves dry. 
Every quarter of an hour, the imprint and the pre- 
sence of man, the power by which he has transformed 
nature, become more visible ; docks, magazines, ship- 
building and caulking yards, stocks, habitable houses, 
prepared materials, accumulated merchandise ; to the 
right is seen the skeleton of an iron church which 
is being prepared here for erection in India. 
Astonishment ends by turning into bewilderment. 
From Greenwich, the river is nothing but a street a 



BOULOGNE TO LONDON BRIDGE. 7 

mile broad and upwards, where ships ascend and 
descend between two rows of buildings, interminable 
rows of a dull red, in brick or tiles, bordered with, 
great piles stuck in the mud for mooring vessels, 
which come here to unload or to load. Ever new 
magazines for copper, stone, coal, cordage, and the 
rest ; bales are always being piled up, sacks being 
hoisted, barrels being rolled, cranes are creeking, 
capstans sounding. The sea reaches London by the 
river ; it is an Inland port ; JSTew York, Melbourne, 
Canton, Calcutta, are in direct connection with this 
place. But that which carries the impression to its 
height, is the sight of the canals through which the 
docks communicate with the sea ; they form cross- 
streets, and they are streets for ships ; one suddenly 
perceives a line of them which is endless ; from Green- 
wich Park where I ascended last year, the horizon is 
bounded with masts and ropes. The incalculable in- 
distinct rigging stretches a spiders*-web in a circle 
at the side of the sky. This is certainly one of the 
great spectacles of our planet ; to- see a similar con- 
glomeration of erections, of men, of vessels, and of 
business, it would be necessary to go to China. 

However, on the river to the west, rises an inex- 
tricable forest of yards, of masts, of rigging : these 
are the vessels which arrive, depart or anchor, in the 
first place in groups, then in long rows, then in a 
continuous heap, crowded together, massed against 
the chimneys of houses and the pulleys of warehouses, 
with all the tackle of incessant, regular, gigantic labour. 
A foggy smoke penetrated with light envelopes them ; 
the sun there sifts its golden rain, and the brackish, 
tawny, half-green, half-violet water, balances in its 
undulations striking and strange reflections. It might 



8 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

be said this was tlie heavy and smoky air of a large 
hothouse. Nothing is natural here, everything is 
transformed, artificially wrought from the toil of 
man, up to the light and the air. But the hugeness of 
the conglomeration and of the human creation hinders 
us from thinking about this deformity and this artifice; 
for want of pure and healthy beauty, the swarming 
and grandiose life remains ; the shimmering of em- 
browned waves, the scattering of the light imprisoned 
in vapour, the soft whitish or pink tints which cover 
these vastnesses, diffuse a sort of grace over the pro- 
digious city, having the effect of a smile upon the face 
of a shaggy and blackened Cyclop. 



11. 



iSUNDAY IN LONDON. THE STREETS AND PARKS. 

QUJS'DAY in London in the rain : the shops are shut, 
^ the streets almost deserted; the aspect is that of 
an immense and a well-ordered cemetery. The few 
passers-by under their umbrellas, in the desert of 
squares and streets, have the look of uneasy spirits 
who have risen from their graves ; it is appalling. 

I had no conception of such a spectacle, which is 
said to be frequent in London. The rain is small, 
compact, pitiless ; looking at it one can see no reason 
why it should not continue to the end of all things ; 
one's feet churn water, there is water everywhere, 
filthy water impregnated with an odour of soot. A 
yellow, dense fog fills the air, sweeps down to the 
ground ; at thirty paces a house, a steam-boat appear 
as spots upon blotting-paper. After an hour's walk 
in the Strand especially, and in the rest of the City, 
one has the spleen, one meditates suicide. The 
lofty lines of fronts are of sombre brick, the exuda- 
tions being encrusted with fog and soot. Mono- 
tony and silence ; yet the inscriptions on metal or 
marble speak and tell of the absent master, as in a 
large manufactory of bone-black closed on account of a 
death. 



10 NOTjES on ENGLAND. 

A friglitful thing is the huge palace in the Strand, 
which is called Somerset House. Massive and heavy 
piece of architecture, of which the hollows are inked, 
the porticoes blackened with soot, where, in the cavity 
of the empty court, is a sham fountain without water, 
pools of water on the pavement, long rows of closed 
windows — what can they possibly do in these cata- 
combs ? It seems as if the livid and sooty fog had 
even befouled the verdure of the parks. But what 
most offends the eyes are the colonnades, peristyles, 
Grecian ornaments, mouldings, and wreaths of the 
houses, all bathed in soot ; poor antique architecture — 
what is it doing in such a climate ? The flutings and 
columns in front of the British Museum are be- 
grimed as if liquid mud had been poured over them. 
St. Paul's, a kind of Pantheon, has two ranges of 
columns, the lower range is entirely black, the upper 
range, recently scraped, is still white, but the white is 
offensive, coal smoke has already plastered it with its 
leprosy. 

These spots are melancholy, being the decay of the 
stone. And these nude statues in memory of Greece ! 
Wellington as a fighting hero, naked under the drip- 
ping trees of the park ! That hideous Nelson, stuck 
on his column with a coil of rope in the form of a 
pig-tail, like a rat impaled on the top of a pole ! 
Every form, every classical idea is contrary to nature 
here. A swamp like this is a place of exile for the arts 
of antiquity. When the Pomans disembarked here they 
must have thought themselves in Homer's hell, in the 
land of the Cimmerians. The vast space which, in the 
south, stretches between the earth and the sky, cannot 
be discovered by the eye ; there is no air ; there is 
nothing but liquid fog ; in this pale smoke objects are 



SUNDA F IN L ONDON. 1 1 

but fading phantoms, Nature has the look of a bad 
drawing in charcoal which some one has rubbed with 
his sleeve. I have just spent half-an-hour on Waterloo 
Bridge ; the Houses of Parliament, blurred and in- 
distinct, appear in the distance but a wretched pile of 
scaffolding ; nothing is discernible, and, more par- 
ticularly, nothing is living, except a few steamboats 
skimming along the river, black, smoky, unwearied 
insects ; a Greek watching their passengers embarking 
and disembarking would have thought of the Styx. 
He would have found that to exist here was not to 
live ; in fact, life here is different from what it is in 
his country ; the ideal has altered with the climate. 
The mind quits the without to retire within itself, and 
there create a world. Here one must have a com- 
fortable and well-ordered home, clubs, societies, plenty 
of business, many religious and moral preoccupations ; 
above all, instead of abandoning oneself to the in- 
fluence of exterior impressions, it is necessary to 
extrude all the sad promptings of unfriendly Nature, 
and fill up the great void wherein melancholy and 
tedium would take up their abode. During the week 
one has work, constant, earnest work, wherewith to 
ward off and arm oneself against the inclemency of 
things. But what is to be done on the day of rest ? 
There is the church or the pot-house, intoxication or a 
sermon, insensibility or refection, but no other way of 
spending a Sunday such as this ; in that way, whether 
in thinking, whether in making a beast of oneself, one 
is absorbed, one attains forgetfulness. I observe many 
doors ajar in the spirit vaults, sad faces, worn or wild, 
pass out and in. Let us visit the churches. 

I visited four, and I heard two sermons, the first in 
a church in the Strand. A naked, cold, and unor- 



12 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

namented structure, with the exception of two alle- 
gorical figures at the end ; large wooden pews in 
which one is ensconced up to the neck. The con- 
gregation which fills it is composed not of the com- 
monalty, but of the respectable middle class, very well 
dressed, and with serious and sensible physiognomies. 
They come to provision themselves with moral coun- 
sels, to refresh their principles. The preacher chose 
for his text, " One mind, one spirit,'* and thereupon he 
advised his hearers to hold fast to their principles, yet 
to be conciliatory towards their fellows. The sermon 
was good — slightly commonplace, yet solid. When 
reading the numerous essays in English literature, 
and at the present day the moralisings of the Saturday 
RevieWy one perceives that commonplaces do not weary 
them ; apparently they consider morality not as an 
object of curiosity, but as a practical tool, an instru- 
ment in daily use which must be sharpened every 
Sunday. 

The books displayed on the ledges of the pews are 
the Psalms and the Book of Common Prayer — the 
mass book of England. It is marked by much 
elevation, and a certain Hebraic sublimity in the 
style of Milton ; yet by no tenderness and outpourings 
as in the " Imitation," no flowers of rhetoric or sen- 
timeatal namby-pambyness, as in our minor devotional 
works ; but by an imposing, impassioned, and some- 
times a lyrical tone. The Liturgy was compiled at 
the period of the Kevival, and retains its accent. A 
noteworthy point is that here the date and origin of 
each piece are noted, this one being of the sixteenth 
century ; this passage being taken from the Apocrypha, 
but retained on account of its elevation. The believer 
is instructed by these remarks, is informed about 



SUNDAY IN LONDON. i^ 

criticism and history ; see the sermons of Tillotson 
and of Barrow at the era of Bossuet, with their Greek 
texts and discussions about the grammatical inter- 
pretation. Time being given, this necessarily leads to 
German exegesis. 

The superb nave, the admirable Gothic architecture 
of Westminster Abbey, are alone adapted to the 
climate ; this labyrinth of forms, these sweeping and 
huge mouldings, this profusion of delicate sculptures, 
are required to fill the dim air and people the void of 
such sombre interiors. I wandered about looking at 
the mortuary monuments, the numerous graceful 
sculptures of the eighteenth century, others of our 
own age so cold and pedantic, when suddenly the 
music pealed forth, not the monotonous psalmody of 
our Yespers, the rude and monkish chants, the verses 
and responses which seem to be the voices of ailing 
nuns, but beautiful pieces in parts, grave and noble 
recitative, melodious outbursts of harmony, the pro- 
ductions of the best epoch. Then after the reading of 
a passage about Sisera, the organ and the choristers, 
children's voices and bass voices, sounded forth a full 
and rich anthem. Such music as that is the worthy 
accompaniment to the psalms and to the prayers which 
I have just perused. Thus understood, worship is the 
opera of elevated, serious, and believing souls. Nothing 
is more important ; it is essential that the church and 
the services should be on a level with the sentiments of 
a people, not merely of the crowd and of the unedu- 
cated, but of the select few. 

I visited two other churches in the afternoon. 
There, too, the music was beautiful, and the edifice 
was filled with the well-to-do middle class. The largo 
enclosed pews, all the galleries were filled with well- 



14 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

dressed persons ; there are as many men as women, 
and many gentlemen ; the public was not our public 
of women, old curmudgeons, servant girls, common 
people. Of the three clergymen I have seen, one 
v/orthy and polite, who spoke to me, had the air of 
a semi -professor and semi-magistrate. Another re- 
sembled a Parisian notary, mature and well preserved, 
who assumes soft tones and a sentimental look, in order 
to procure the signing of a marriage contract. I saw 
others last year in London and the country. With 
their short gown, the tone they use in the pulpit, one 
would take them for judges or chief justices ; by their 
education, their marriage, their manners, their calling, 
they are laymen slightly graver than the others ; their 
garb out of church is that of laymen, with the ex- 
ception of the everlasting white tie ; the moral differ- 
ence is not much greater than the material difference. 
This is the essential point ; to place the layman on a 
par with the priest, or at most separated by one degree 
only, is in truth the work of the Reformation. 

On returning to my hotel I read the following pro- 
clamation in Friday's Gazette : — *' Yictoria R. : We, 
most seriously and religiously considering that it is our 
indispensable duty to bo careful above all other things 
to preserve and advance the honour and service of 
Almighty God, and to discourage and suppress all 

vice, profaneness, debauchery, and immorality 

we do hereby strictly enjoin and prohibit all our loving 
subjects, of what degree or quality soever, from playing 
on the Lord's-day, at dice, cards, or any other game 
whatsoever, either in public or private houses, or other 
place or places whatsoever ; and we do hereby require 
and command them, and every of them decently and 
reverently to attend the worship of God on every 



SUNDA Y IN L ONDON, 1 5 

Lord's-day ;" and the magistrates are enjoined " to take 
effectual care to prevent all persons keeping taverns, 
or other public houses whatsoever, from selling wine, 
beer, or other liquors, or receiving or permitting 
guests to be or remain in such their houses in the 
time of Divine service on the Lord's-day." 

This order is not strictly observed ; the tavern doors 
are closed during service, but they can be opened and 
drinking goes on in the back room. In any case this 
is a relic of the old Puritanism altogether distasteful in 
France. Prohibit people to drink and amuse them- 
selves on Sunday ? But to a French workman, and 
to a peasant, Sunday appears to have been made for 
nothing else. Stendhal said that here, in Scotland, in 
true Biblical countries, religion spoils one day out of 
seven, destroys the seventh part of possible happiness. 
He judges the Englishman, the man of the IN^orth, after 
the model of the man of the South, whom wine exhila- 
rates and does not brutalise, who can without incon- 
venience give way to his instinct, and whose pleasure 
is poetical. Here the temperament is different, more 
violent and more combative ; pleasure is a brutish and 
bestial thing : I could cite twenty examples of tljis. 
An Englishman said to me, '' When a Frenchman is 
drunk he chatters ; when a German is drunk he sleeps ; 
when an Englishman is drunk he fights.'' 

Other traces of Puritanical severity, among the rest, are 
the recommendations on the stairs which lead down to 
the Thames, and elsewhere; one is requested to be decent. 
At the railway-station there are large Bibles fastened to 
chains for the use of the passengers while waiting for 
the train. A tall, sallow, and bony fellow handed to me 
two printed pages on the brazen serpent of Moses, with 
applications to the present life: ''You, too, oh reader, 



1 6 NOTES ON ENGLAND, 

have been bitten by the fiery serpents. To heal your- 
self lift up jour eyes to Him wbo has been elevated as 
the sign of salvation." Other tokens denote an aristo- 
cratic country. At the gate of St. James's Park is the 
following notice : " The park-keepers have orders to 
prevent all beggars from entering the gardens, and all 
persons in ragged or dirty clothes, or who are not 
outwardly decent and well-behaved/' At every step 
one feels oneself further removed from France. 

The population numbers three millions and a quarter; 
that makes twelve cities like Marseilles, ten cities like 
Lyons, two cities like Paiis put together; but words 
upon paper are no substitutes for the sensation of the 
eyes. It is necessary to take a cab several days in 
succession, and proceed straight on towards the south, 
the north, the east, and the west, during a whole 
morning, as far as the uncertain limits where houses 
grow scanty and the country begins. 

Enormous, enormous — this is the word which always 
recurs. Moreover, all is rich and well ordered ; conse- 
quently, they must think us n'jglected and poor. Paris 
is mediocre compared with these squares, these cres- 
cents, these circles and rows of monumental buildings 
of massive stone, with porticoes, with sculptured fronts, 
these spacious streets ; there are sixty of them as vast 
as the Rue de la Paix ; assuredly Napoleon III. de- 
molished and rebuilt Paris only because he had lived 
in Lo:idon. In the Strand, in Piccadilly, in Regent 
Street, in the neighbourhood of London Bridge, in 
twenty places, there is a bustling crowd, a surging 
traffic, an amount of obstruction which our busiest and 
most frequented boulevard cannot parallel. Everything 
is on a large scale here; the clubs are palaces, the 
hotels are monuments ; the river is an arm of the sea ; 



THE STREETS AND PARKS. i^ 

tho cabs go twice as fast ; tlie boatmen and the omnibus- 
conductors condense a sentence into a word ; words and 
gestures are economised ; actions and time are turned 
to the utmost possible account ; the human being pro- 
duces and expends twice as much as among us. 

From London Bridge to Hampton Court are eight 
miles, that is, nearly three leagues of buildings. After 
the streets and quarters erected together, as one piece, 
by wholesale, like a hive after a model, come the count- 
less pleasure retreats, cottages surrounded with verdure 
and trees in all styles — Gothic, Grecian, Byzantine, 
Italian, of the Middle Age, or the E-evival, with every 
mixture and every shade of style, generally in lines or 
clusters of five, ten, twenty of the same sort, apparently 
the handiwork of the same builder, like so many 
specimens of the same vase or the same bronze. They 
deal in houses as we deal in Parisian articles. What 
a multitude of well-to-do, comfortable, and rich exist- 
ences ! One divines accumulated gains, a wealthy and 
spending middle-class quite different from ours, so 
pinched, so straitened. The most humble, in brown 
brick, are pretty by dint of tidiness ; the window panes 
sparkle like mirrors ; there is nearly always a green 
and flowery patch ; the front is covered with ivy, 
honeysuckle, and nasturtiums. 

The entire circumference of Hyde Park is covered 
with houses of this sort, but finer, and these in the 
midst of London retain a country look ; each stands 
detached in its square of turf and shrubs, has two stories 
in the most perfect order and condition, a portico, a 
bell for the tradespeople, a bell for the visitors, a base- 
ment for the kitchen and the servants, with a flight 
of steps for the service ; very few mouldings and orna- 
ments; no outside sun- shutters ; large, clear windows, 

c 



1 8 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

wliicli let in plenty of light ; flowers on the sills and 
at the portico ; stables in a mews apart, in order that 
their odours and sight may be kept at a distance ; alj 
the external surface covered with white, shinino^, and 
varnished stucco ; not a speck of mud or dust ; the 
trees, the turf, the flowers, the servants prepared as if 
for an exhibition of prize products. How well one can 
picture the inhabitant after seeing his shell ! In the 
first place, it is the Teuton who loves Nature, and who 
needs a reminder of the country ; next, it is the 
Englishman who wishes to be by himself in his stair- 
case as in his room, who could not endure the pro- 
miscuous existence of our huge Parisian cages, and 
who, even in London, plans his house as a small castle, 
independent and enclosed. Besides, he is simple, and 
does not desire external display ; on the other hand, he 
is exacting in the matter of condition and comfort, 
and separates his life from that of his inferiors. The 
number of such houses at the West-end is astonishing ! 
The rent is nearly £500 ; from five to seven servants 
are kept ; the master expends from twelve to twenty- 
four hundred pounds a year. There are ten of these 
fortunes and these lives in England to every one in 
France. 

The impression is the same when visiting the parks ; 
the taste, the area are quite different from what is the 
case among us. St. James's Park is a genuine piece 
of country, and of English country ; huge old trees, 
real meadows, a large pond peopled with ducks and 
waterfowl ; cows and sheep, in an enclosed space, feed 
on the grass, which is always fresh. There are even 
sheep in the narrow green border that surrounds 
\Yestminster Abbey ; these people love the country in 
their hearts. It is sufficient to read their literature 



THE STREETS AND PARKS. 19 

from Chaucer to Shakespeare, from Thomson to "Words- 
worth and Shelley, to find proofs of this. What a 
contrast to the Tuileries, the Champs Elysee, the 
Luxembourg ! As a rule, the French garden, that 
of Louis Xiy., is a room or gallery in the open air, 
wherein to walk and converse in company ; in the 
English garden, such as they have invented and pro- 
pagated, one is better alone ; the eyes and the mind 
converse with natural things. We have arranged a 
park on this model in the Bois de Boulogne ; but we 
have committed the blunder of placing therein a group 
of rocks and waterfalls ; the artifice is discovered at 
a glance, and ofiends ; English eyes would have felt it. 
Regent's Park is larger than the Jardin des Plantes 
and the Luxembourg put together. I have often 
remarked that our life seems to them cooped up, con- 
fined ; they need air and space more than we do ; 
Englishmen whom I knew in Paris left their windows 
open all night ; thus arises their longing for motion, 
their horse and foot races in the country. Stendhal 
justly said that a young English girl walks a greater 
distance in a week than a young Poman girl in a year ; 
the Northern man, of athletic temperament, has a need 
of free respiration and of exercise. This park is in a 
retired neighbourhood ; one hears no longer the rolling 
of carriages, and one forgets London ; it is a solitude. 
The sun shines, but the air is always charged with damp 
clouds, floating watering-pots which dis'solve in I'ain 
every quarter of an hour. The vast watery meadows 
have a charming softness, and thci green branches drip 
with monotonous sound upon the still water of the 
ponds. I enter a hot-house where there are splendid 
orchids, some having the rich velvet of the iris, others 
a fresh colour of that inexpressible, delicious, mingled 



20 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

tint transfused with light like palpitating Hying flesh, 
a woman's breast ; the hand desires yet dreads to press 
it ; alongside, palm-trees raise their stems in a tepid 
atmosphere. A strange thing to us is that there are 
no keepers ; admission is free, and no damage is done ; 
I can understand that they must ridicule our establish- 
ments and public festivals, with their accompaniments 
of municipal guards. It is the same at the railway 
stations : every one is free to move about, to stand on 
the side of the line, to come and meet his friends at 
the carriage door ; they are surprised and annoyed to 
see us caged in our waiting-rooms, enclosed, led like 
sheep, and always under the eye or the hand of an 
ofiicial. 

I returned on foot to Piccadilly ; again the London 
weather begins — the small and constant rain, the dis- 
solving mud. F., who has spent the winter here, says 
that there is little snow, not more than in the centre 
of France ; but, on the other hand, there is perpetual 
fog, rain nearly every day, and the most execrable 
muddy streets for pedestrians. As evidences, look at 
the foot- coverings and the feet of the ladies. Their 
boots are as large as those of gentlemen, their feet are 
those of watermen, and their gait is in keeping. My 
question continually recurs. How do the English spend 
their leisure hours, among others, their Sunday ? They 
have the Club and often wine. F., in his club, had 
a neighbour who, in the reading-room, drank a large 
glass of wine, then went to sleep, drank a second half 
an hour afterwards and went to sleep again, and so on 
in succession without ever saying a word. Another of 
great wealth, a leading merchant, and who has sixteen 
gardeners at his country seat, is occupied all day with 
his business, returns home in the evening, speaks but 



THE STREETS AND PARKS. 21 

seldom, lives like an automaton among his children ; 
his daughter amuses herself by travelling about the 
entire year with a governess ; in the family circle he 
merely finds the money — this is a common trait of the 
English character, deficiency in expansion and in amia- 
bility. 

From Regent's Park to Piccadilly the spacious and 
interminable streets have a funereal aspect ; the road- 
way is of black macadam ; the rows of buildings, of 
the same cast, consist of blackened brick, where the win- 
dow-panes shine with dark reflections ; each house is 
separated from the street by railings and an area. There 
are few shops, not a single pretty one, no large plate- 
glass windows and engravings ; that would be too 
dismal for us ; nothing to attract and gladden the 
eyes ; lounging is impossible ; it is necessary to do 
one's work at home, or to take one's umbrella and go 
to business or to one's society. 

Hyde Park is the largest of them all, with its small 
rivulet, its wide green- sward, its sheep, its shady walks, 
resembling a pleasure park suddenly transported to the 
centre of a capital. About two o'clock the principal 
alley is a riding-ground ; there are ten times more 
gentlemen and twenty times more ladies on horseback 
than in the Bois de Boulogne on its most frequented 
days ; little girls and boys of eight ride on ponies by 
the side of their father ; I have seen ample and worthy 
matrons trotting along. This is one of their luxuries. 
Add to it that of having servants. For instance, a 
family of three persons which I visited keeps seven 
servants and three horses. The mother and daughter 
gallop in the park daily; they often pay visits on 
horseback ; they economise in other things — in theatre- 
going, for example ; they go but seldom to the theatre, 



22 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

and wlien they do it is to a jbox which has been pre- 
sented to them. This vigorous exercise appears indis- 
pensable for health ; young girls and ladies come here 
'even when it rains. To keep three horses and a 
carriage costs nearly £200 a year. Looking at this 
crowd of persons on horseback one comes to the same 
conclusion as after sBeing the houses and the staff of 
servants. The wealthy class is much more numerous 
in England than in France. Another index is the 
outlay in linen, clothes, gloves, and dresses always 
new. The climate dirties everything rapidly ; they 
must be continually renovated. In every newspaper I 
find the addresses of dealers who come to the house 
and buy slightly soiled clothes ; the obligation of a 
gentleman is to be always irreproachably well dressed ; 
his coat when shabby is handed over to a man of the 
lower class, ends in rags on the back of a beggar, and 
thus marks the social rank of its possessor. JSTo where 
else is the disparity of conditions so clearly written in 
the externals of men. Imagine the evening dress of a 
man of fashion or the rose-coloured bonnet of a lady ; 
you will find the former again on a miserable wretch 
squatting on one of the stairs of the Thames, and the 
latter at Shadwell on the head of an old woman groping 
amidst rubbish. 

From five to seven o'clock is the review of ladies'] 
dresses. Beauty and ornamentation abound, but tastej 
is wanting. The colours are outrageously crude and 
the forms ungraceful ; crinolines too distended and] 
badly distended, in geometrical cones or bunched, 
green flounces, embroideries, flowered dresses, quan- 
tities of floating gauze, packets of falling or frizzed] 
hair ; crowning this display tiny embroidered and] 
imperceptible bonnets. The bonnets are too much.] 



THE STREETS AND PARKS. 23 

adorned, tlie hair, too shiny, presses closely on the 
temples ; the small mantle or casaque falls formless to 
the lower part of the back, the petticoat expands pro- 
digiously, and all the scaffolding badly joined, badly 
arranged, variegated and laboured, cries and protests 
with all its gaudy and overdone colours. In the sun- 
shine, especially, at Hampton Court the day before 
yesterday, amongst the shopkeepers' wives, the absur- 
dity was at its height ; there were many violet dresses, 
one being of a wild violet clasped round the waist with 
a golden band, which would have made a painter cry 
out. I said to a lady, " The toilette is more showy 
among you than in France.'' "But my dresses come 
from Paris ! " I carefully refrained from replying, 
" But you selected them." 

Excepting only the highest class, they apparel them- 
selves as fancy dictates. One imagines healthy bodies, 
well built, beautiful at times ; but they must be 
imagined. The physiognomy is often pure, but also 
often sheepish. Many are simple babies, new waxen 
dolls, with glass eyes, which appear entirely empty of 
ideas. Other faces have become ruddy, and turned to 
raw beefsteak. There is a fund of folly or of brutality 
in this inert flesh — too white, or too red. Some are 
ugly or grotesque in the extreme ; with heron's feet, 
stork's necks, always having the large front of white 
teeth, the projecting jaws of carnivora. As compensa- 
tion, others are beautiful in the extreme. They have 
angelic faces ; their eyes, of pale periwinkle, are softly 
deep; their complexion is that of a flower, or an 
infant ; their smile is diyine. One of these days, 
about ten o'clock in the morning, near Hyde Park 
Corner, I was rooted to the spot motionless with admi- 
ration at the sight of two young ladies ; the one was 



24 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

sixteen, tlie other eighteen years old. They were in 
rustling dresses of white tulle amid a cloud of muslin ; 
tall, slender, agile, their shape as perfect as their face, 
of incomparable freshness, resembling those marvellous 
flowers seen in select exhibitions, the whiteness of the 
lily or orchis ; in addition to all that, gaiety, inno- 
cence, a superabundance of unalloyed sap and infantine 
expression, of laughter, and the mien of birds ; the 
earth did not support them. Many of the horsewomen 
are charming, so simple, and so serious, without a trace 
of coquetry ; they come here not to be seen, but to take 
the air ; their manner is frank without pretension ; 
their shake of the hand quite loyal, almost masculine ; 
no frippery in their attire ; the small black vest, 
tightened at the waist, moulds a fine shape and healthy 
form ; to my mind, the first duty of a young lady is to 
be in good health. They manage their horses with 
complete ease and assurance. Sometimes the father or 
brother stops and talks business or politics with a 
friend ; the ladies listen and thus habituate themselves 
to serious topics. These fathers and brothers, too, are 
a pleasant sight ; expressive and resolute faces, which 
bear, or have borne, the burden of life ; less exhausted 
than among us, less ready to smile and to execute the 
tricks of politeness, but calmer and more staid, and 
who often excite in the onlooker a vague impression of 
respect, of esteem at least, and often of trust. Perhaps 
this is because I am instructed as to their condition ; 
yet it seems to me that mistake is difficult : whether 
nobles, members of Parliament, landed proprietors, 
their manners and their physiognomies are those of 
men accustomed to authority, and who have wielded it. 



III. 



ST. JAMES S PARK, RICHMOND, THE DOCKS, AND 
EAST-END. 

T HA YE paid many visits, and taken several walks. 
-^ The things which please me most are the trees. 
Every day, after leaving the Athenaeum, I go and 
sit for an hour in St. James's Park ; the lake shines 
softly beneath its misty covering, while the dense 
foliage bends over the still waters. The rounded 
trees, the great green domes make a kind of architec- 
ture far more delicate than the other. The eye 
reposes itself upon these softened forms, upon these 
subdued tones. These are beauties, but tender and 
touching, those of foggy countries, of Holland. Yes- 
terday, at eight o'clock in the evening, although the 
weather was fine, everything seen from the Suspension 
Bridge appeared vapoury ; the last rays disappeared in 
whitish smoke ; on the right, the remains of redness ; 
over the Thames, and in the rest of the sky a pale 
slate tint. There are tones like these in the landscapes 
of Rembrandt, in the twilights of Yan der Neer ; the 
bathed light, the air charged with vapour, the insen- 
sible and continuous changes of the vast exhalation 
which softens, imparts a bluish tint to, and dims thr» 



26 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

contours, the whole producing the impression of a 
g.reat life, vague, diffused, and melancholy — the life of 
a humid country. 

At Richmond, I felt this still better. From the 
terrace can be discerned several leagues of country ; 
the Thames, which is not larger than the Seine, winds 
through meadows, between clumps of large trees. All 
is green, of a soft green, almost effaced by the dis- 
tance ; one feels the freshness and the peace of the 
infinite vegetation; the grey sky extends over it a low 
and heavy dome ; at the horizon are whitish mists in 
floating layers, here and there a darkened cloud, or the 
violet patch of a shower. From all the ground rises a 
sluggish mist ; one watches it as if it were a piece of 
muslin drawn between the interstices of the trees, and 
gradually the floating gauze of the earth re-unites with 
the uniform veil of the sky. How still is the park ! 
Troops of deer feed in the moist brake ; the hinds 
approach the fence, and gaze on the passer by without 
fear. Can a tract of country be better arranged for 
relaxing the nerves of the man who struggles and 
toils? The oaks, the lime trees, the spreading and 
huge chestnut trees, are noble creatures which seem to 
speak in low tones with majesty and security ; at their 
feet is thick and tall grass ; the blades of grass, where- 
on the rain has left its tears, smile with a tender and 
sad grace. A sort of fond quietude emanates from the 
air, the sky, and all things ; Nature welcomes the 
soul, weary and worn with striving. How one feels 
that their landscape suits them, and why they love it ! 
Without doubt their climate befits trees, and, besides, 
they have had no invasion or popular rising to mutilate 
or cut them down ; the national taste has favoured their 
preservation ; olden things have been more respected 



RICHMOND. 27 

and better preserved than in France, and among them 
must be numbered the trees. 

Those of Windsor and of Hampton Court are ,as 
beautiful. From Kew Gardens to Hampton Court 
extends an alley of gigantic chestnut trees, of which the 
large pink and white bunches resemble girandoles. 
The foliage is so thick that underneath it is cool in the 
height of the sun. Upon the velvet of the grass, con- 
stellated with flowers and bordered by nasturtiums, 
stand forth clusters of rhododendrons, as tall as two 
men, entirely covered with rose-coloured flowers, amid 
which bees are humming. There are so many of them, 
they are so magnificent, of so tender a tissue and of so 
fine a tone, they are grouped with such profusion in a 
single clump wholly impregnated with light, that orue 
remains dazzled ; it is delicious, intoxicating ; almost 
beyond Nature. A little way farther, in an enormous 
hot-house, palms, as large as oak, spread their curious 
vegetation, and bananas unfold leaves which would 
cover a child twelve years old. This is one of their 
talents ; they admirably understand the architecture 
of trees, of grass, and of flowers ; I have not seen even 
a classical palace or even a poor cottage where it was 
uncomprehended. Sometimes, indeed, the efi'ect is too 
strong ; in the sun, it is overpowering ; the incom- 
parable verdure then assumes tones so rich and intense 
that they cannot be transferred to canvas ; they would 
ofl'end, they would be too raw ; it is necessary to enjoy 
them with the mind, not with the eyes ; they are a 
feast, and, as it were, an outburst of delight ; in order 
to prepare and maintain them, swell and expand the 
tissues, moisture was required, excessive moisture, the 
caress and the guardianship of soft vapour ; beneath a 
warmer sky, such flowers would be stiff'ened and dried ; 



28 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

they are not accustomed to bear the full sun ; hence it 
is that they break forth to-day under his blaze. They 
have the tint of a beautiful lady ; they, too, are patri- 
cians developed, preserved, embellished by all the 
refinements of art and of luxury; I have had the 
same impression at a full-dress morning party, before a 
staircase filled from top to bottom with young laugh- 
ing ladies in swelling and sweeping dresses of tulle, of 
silk, the head covered with diamonds, the shoulders 
bare. This was a unique sensation, that of splendour 
and brilliancy carried to the highest pitch — all the 
flowers of civilisation and of nature in a single bouquet 
and in a single perfume. 

Hampton Court is a large garden in the French 
style, laid out in the time of William III. Our style 
was tlien the reigning one in Europe. Yet English 
taste is discoverable here also : the borders have been 
planted with standard rosebushes, and these, closely 
trained along the slight espaliers, form columns of 
flowers. Ducks, swans swim in all the pieces of water; 
water-lilies unfold their velvet stars. The old trees 
are propped up by iron rods. When they die, in order 
that they may not be wholly lost, the remainder of 
their trunks are converted into a kind of huge urn. 
Clearly, they are cared for and they are loved. There 
are no fences. I noticed young boarding-school girls 
walking and playing on the grass, but they never 
pluck a flower. The following notice suffices to pro- 
tect the garden : — " It is hoped that the public will 
abstain from destrojdng that which is cultivated for 
the public gratification.'' I have seen families of 
common people taking their dinners on the green 
sward of Hyde Park ; they neither tore up nor spoilt 
anything. This is perfect ; the aim of every society is 



PRIVATE INCOMES. 29 

that eacli one should be always his own constable, and 
end by not having any other. 

My English friends confirm what I had guessed 
about the large number and the vastness of the private 
fortunes. " Take a cab from Sydenham ; for five 
miles you will pass houses which indicate an annual 
outlay of £1,500 and upwards." According to the 
official statistics of 1841, there are one million of ser- 
vants to sixteen millions of inhabitants. The liberal 
professions are much better remunerated than on the 
Continent. I know a musician at Leipzig of first- 
class talent ; he receives 3s. a lesson at the Academy 
of Leipzig, 6s. in the city, and one guinea in London. 
The visit of a doctor who is not celebrated costs 4s. or 
9s. in Paris, and a guinea here. With us a professor 
at the College of France receives £300, at the Sor- 
bonne £480, at the School of Medicine £400. A pro- 
fessor at Oxford, a head of a house, has often from 
£1,000 to £3,000. Tennyson, who writes little, is said 
to make £5,000 a year. The Head Master of Eton 
has a salary of £6,080, of Harrow £6,280, of Rugby 
£2,960 ; many of the masters in these establishments 
have salaries from £1,200 to £1,240 — one of them at 
Harrow has £2,220. The Bishop of London has 
£10,000 a year, the Archbishop of York has £15,000. 
An article is paid for at the rate of £8 the sheet in the 
RcTue des Deux Mondes, and £20 in the English 
Quarterlies. The Times has paid £100 for a certain 
article. Thackeray, the novelist, has made £160 in 
twenty-four hours through the medium of two lectures, 
the one being delivered in Brighton, the other in 
London; from the magazine to which he contributed 
his novels he received £2,000 a year, and £10 a page 
in addition ; this magazine had 100,000 subscribers ; 



30 NOTES ON ENGLAND, 

lie estimated his own yearly earnings at £4,800. It 
must be understood that I put on one side the enor- 
mous fortunes made in manufactures, those of the 
nobility, the profit or revenues of £200,000 yearly ; 
their outlay is proportionate. A young engineer, a 
younger son, and who was obliged to make his fortune, 
said to me one day, '* With £8,000 yearly one is not 
wealthy in England, one is merely very comfortabl}^ 
off." Another, who spends his summers in the 
country, added, ''look at the family circles of our 
farmers ; their daughters learn French and to i)lay on 
the piano ; they dress splendidly." The rule is to 
make much and to spend much : an Englishman does 
not put anything aside, does not think of the future, 
at the most he insures his life ; in this he is the 
reverse of a Frenchman, who is saving and abstemious. 

Whence comes all this money, and how is it dis- 
tributed ? I shall endeavour to procure the statistics ; 
meantime, let us examine one of the great reservoirs 
whence gold flows through the people of all conditions, 
and over the whole country — the Docks of London. 

I always find that London resembles ancient Rome 
as Paris resembles ancient Athens. This modern 
Rome, how heavily must it weigh, like the other, upon 
the labouring class ! For every monstrous erection, 
Babylon, Egypt, imperial Rome, indicates an accumu- 
lation of efforts, an excess of fatigue. I have never 
seen a great city, whether a capital or place of manu- 
factures, without thinking of the nations which have 
vanished from around the Mediterranean under the 
pressure of the Roman machine. It is true that to-day 
there are no more slaves before the law; yet frequently 
man is a slave in fact, and by the constraint of his 
condition. 



THE DOCKS. 31 

These docks are prodigious, overpowering ; there are 
six of them each of which is a vast port, and accommo- 
dates a multitude of three-masted vessels. There are 
ships everywhere, and ships upon ships in rows, show 
their heads and their swelling bosoms, like beautiful 
fish, under their cuirass of copper. One of them has 
arrived from Australia, and is of 2,500 tons burden, 
others are 3,000 tons and upwards ; some of them hail 
from all parts of the world, this is the trysting-place 
of the globe. For the most part they are magnificent. 
Seen from the keel they are leviathans, and they are 
slender and as elegant as swans. A merchant who is 
here superintending the arrival of spices from Java, 
and the transhipment of ice from Norway, tells me 
that about 40,000 vessels enter every year, and that 
on an average, there are from 5,000 to 6,000 in the 
docks or the river at one time. 

In the wine quarter the cellars contain 30,000 
barrels of port. A crane discharges them. They 
seem to move of their own accord. When brought on 
a little wheeled truck, they slide down an incline to 
their places, almost without labour. The machines 
work so well that they appear to be living auxiliaries, 
voluntary slaves. Note that bridge ; it weighs a 
hundred tons ; yet one man moves it by means of a 
screw-jack. There is a quarter for groceries, a quarter 
for skins and leather, a quarter for tallow. The cellars 
and the warehouses are colossal. Under their arch, 
equal to that of a large bridge, one beholds the 
peopled and profound obscurity recede far away. 
Rembrandt would have found ready-made pictures in 
their mysterious distances, in the flickering blackness 
of their choked-up air-holes, in these infinite recep- 
tacles where a hive of men is moving about. They 



32 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

roll the casks without confusion and with calmness 
One hears the voices of clerks calling out the numbers. 
In the middle of the cellar a foreman, seated at a small 
table, makes entries or looks on. The masters, who are 
grave, and in black hats, walk about superintending 
in silence. Yet around the capstans are creaking^ and 
sailors in boats are scraping or scrubbing their ship. 
Thus occupied in their working coats, with their 
serious air, their phlegmatic or wearied faces, they 
form a pleasing sight ; one feels that they are in their 
right places, every living being, animal or man, is 
beautiful in his proper place. 

I was smoking, seated on a bale, when a man pass- 
ing along said, without stopping, " Five shillings 
fine." ''Is it forbidden then?" "Yes." Nothing 
more. There is no better way of working or making 
others work than to be sparing in gestures or words. 
At Hyde Park Corner there are two policemen 
whom I have frequently watched for a considerable 
time ; they never speak ; if there be a block of vehicles, . 
they raise their arm to stop a coachman, and lower it 
as a sign that he may drive on : the coachman in- 
stantly and silently obeys. Our steward on board the 
steamboat, many servants, and merchants whom I 
have seen, do likewise ; when, in giving orders and 
executing them, chattering, exclamations, tokens of 
impatience, fumbling, and disorder are thus suppressed, 
the command and the performance gear into each 
other as quickly and as surely as two wheels. 

At the end of an hour the mind feels itself over- 
stocked ; it is requisite to permit the images to groiip 
and to arrange themselves. I was at the corner of 
Shadwell Basin and I gazed upon the slate-coloured 
river before me shining and exhaling mist ; the 



THE EAST-END. 



33 



northern bank winds and bounds the horizon with its 
blackish fringe mottled with red ; a few vessels descend 
with the supple and slow movement of a sea-bird ; 
their sombre hulls and brown sails balance themselves 
upon the water which shimmers. To north and south 
a mass of ships raise their crowded masts. The silence 
is almost complete ; one hears but the strokes of distant 
hammers, the vague tinkle of a bell, and the fluttering 
of birds in the trees. A Dutch painter, Yan der 
Heyden, Backhuj^sen, would have taken pleasure in 
beholding this plain of water, the distant tones of 
brick and tar, this uncertain horizon where stretch the 
sleeping clouds. I have seen nothing more picturesque 
in London. The rest is too scrubbed and varnished, or 
too bustling and too foul. 

Shadwell, one of the poor neighbourhoods, is close at 
hand ; by the vastness of its distress, and by its extent, 
it is in keeping with the hugeness and the wealth of 
London. I have seen the bad quarters of Marseilles, 
of Antwerp, of Paris, they do not come near to it. 
Low houses, poor streets of brick under red-tiled roofs 
cross each other in every direction, and lead down with 
a dismal look to the river. Beggars, thieves, harlots, 
the latter especially, crowd Shadwell Street. One hears 
a grating music in the spirit cellars ; sometimes it is 
a negro who handles the violin ; through the open 
windows one perceives unmade beds, women dancing. 
Thrice in ten minutes I saw crowds collected at the 
doors; fights were going on, chiefly fights between 
women ; one of them, her face bleeding, tears in her 
eyes, drunk, shouted with a sharp and harsh voice, and 
wished to fling herself upon a man. The bystanders 
laughed ; the noise caused the adjacent lanes to be 
emptied of their occupants ; ragged, poor cliildren, 

I) 



34 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

harlots — it was like a human sewer suddenly discharg- 
ing its contents. Some of them have a relic of neat- 
ness, a new garment, but the greater number are in 
filthy and unseemly tatters. Figure to yourself what 
a lady's bonnet may become after passing during three 
or four years from head to head, having been crushed 
against walls, having had blows from fists ; for they 
receive them. I noticed blackened eyes, bandaged 
noses, bloody cheek-bones. The women gesticulate 
with extraordinary vehemence ; but most horrible of 
all is their shrill, acute, cracked voice, resembling that 
of an ailing screech-owl. 

From the time of leaving the Tunnel, street boys 
abound — bare-footed, dirty, and turning wheels in 
order to get alms. On the stairs leading to the Thames 
they swarm, more pale-faced, more deformed, more 
repulsive than the scum of Paris ; without question, 
the climate is worse, and the gin more deadly. Near 
them, leaning against the greasy walls, or inert on the 
steps, are men in astounding rags ; it is impossible to 
imagine before seeing them how many layers of dirt 
an overcoat or a pair of trousers could hold ; they 
dream or dose open-mouthed, their faces are begrimed, 
dull, and sometimes streaked with red lines. It is in 
these localities that families have been discovered with 
no other bed than a heap of soot ; they had slept there 
during several months. For a creature so wasted and 
jaded there is but one refuge — drunkenness. " Not 
drink ! " said a desperate character at an inquest. " It 
were better then to die at once." 

A trader said to me, " Look after your pockets, sir/' 
and a policeman warned me not to enter certain lanes. 

I walked through some of the broader ones ; all the 
houses, except one or two, are evidently inhabited by 



THE EAST-EXD. 35 

harlots. Other small streets, dusty courts, reeking 
with a smeil of rotten rags, are draped with tattered 
clothes and linen hung up to dry. Children swarm. 
In a moment, in a narrow court, I saw fourteen or 
fifteen around me — dirty, barefooted, the little sister 
carrying a sucking child in her arms, the year-old 
nursling whose whitish head had no hair. JN^othing 
is more lugubrious than these white bodies, that pale 
flaxen hair, these flabby cheeks encrusted with old 
dirt. They press together, they point out the gentle- 
man with curious and eager gestures. The motionless 
mothers, with an exhausted air, look out at the door. 
One observes the narrow lodofino^, sometimes the sino^le 
room, wherein they are all huddled in the foul air. 
The houses are most frequently one-storied, low, 
narrow — a den in which to sleep and die. "WTiat a 
place of residence in winter, when, during weeks of 
continuous rain and fog, the windows are shut ! And 
in order that this brood may not die of hunger, it is 
necessary that the father should not drink, should 
never be idle, should never be sick. 

Here and there is a dust-heap. Women are labour- 
ing to pick out what is valuable from it. One, old and 
withered, had a short pipe in her mouth. They stand 
up amidst the muck to look at me ; brutalised, dis- 
quieting faces of female Yahoos ; perhaps this pipe and 
a glass of gin is the last idea which floats in their 
idiotic brain. Should we find there anything else than 
the instincts and the appetites of a savage and of a 
beast of burden ? A miserable black cat, lean, lame, 
startled, watches them timidl}'- out of the corner of its 
eye, and furtively searches in a heap of rubbish. It 
was possibly right in feeling uneasy. The old woman, 
muttering, followed it with a look as wild as its own. 



3b NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

She seemed to ttimk that two pounds weight of meat 
were there. 

I recall the alleys which run into Oxford Street, 
stifling lanes, encrusted with human exhalations ; troops 
of pale children nestling on the muddy stairs ; the 
seats on London Bridge, where families, huddled toge- 
ther with drooping heads, shiver through the night ; 
particularly the Haymarket and the Strand in the 
evening. Ever}^ hundred steps one jostles twenty 
harlots ; some of them ask for a glass of gin ; others 
say, " Sir, it is to pay my lodging." This is not de- 
bauchery which flaunts itself, but destitution — and 
such destitution ! The deplorable procession in the 
shade of the monumental streets is sickening ; it seems 
to me a march of the dead. That is a plague-spot — 
the real plague-spot of English society. 



lY. 



VISIT TO EPSOM AND TO CREMOUNE GARDENS. 

RACES at Epsom : it is the Derby day, a day of 
jollification ; Parliament does not sit ; for three 
days all the talk has been about horses and their 
trainers. 

We start from Waterloo Station. The sky is cloud- 
less, free from mist ; my English neighbours remark 
that they had never seen such a day in London. All 
around may be witnessed green husbandry, meadows 
encompassed with hedges, and the hedge-row is often 
interspersed with trees. The splendour of this green, 
the mass and the vigour of lustrous, golden, bursting 
flowers, are extraordinary. Velvets constellated with 
diamonds, watered silks, the most magnificent em- 
broideries do not match this deep hue ; the colour is 
excessive, beyond the reach of paiating; but never 
have the blooming and blossoming of plants, the 
luxury and the joy of the adorned earth, dazzled me 
with such bright pomp. 

Epsom course is a large green plain, slightly undu- 
lating ; on one side are reared three public stands and 
several other smaller ones. In front, tents, hundreds 
of shops, temporary stables under canvas, and an in- 
credible confusion of carriages, of horses, of horsemen, 



38 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

of private omnibuses ; there are perhaps 200,000 human 
heads here. Nothing beautiful nor even elegant ; the 
carriages are ordinary vehicles, and toilettes are rare ; 
one does not come here to exhibit them, but to witness 
a spectacle ; the spectacle is only interesting on account 
of its size. From the top of the Stand the enormous 
ant-heap swarms and its din ascends. But beyond, on 
the right, a row of large trees, behind them the faint 
bluish undulations of the verdant country, make a 
magnificent frame to a mediocre picture. Some clouds 
as white as swans float in the sky, and their shadow 
sweeps over the grass ; a light mist, charged wit}? 
sunshine, flits in the distance, and the illuminated ail, 
like a glory, envelops the plain, the heights, the vast 
area, and all the disorder of the human carnival. 

It is a carnival, in fact ; they have come to amuse 
themselves in a noisy fashion. Everywhere are gipsies, 
comic singers and dancers disguised as negroes, shoot- 
ing galleries where bows and arrows or guns are used, 
charlatans who by dint of eloquence palm off watch- 
chains, games of skittles and sticks, musicians of all 
sorts, and the most astonishing row of cabs, barouches, 
droskies, four-in-hands, with pies, cold meats, melons, 
fruits, wines, especially champagne. They unpack ; 
they proceed to drink and eat ; that restores tlie 
creature and excites him ; coarse joy and open laugh- 
ter are the result of a full stomach. In presence of 
this ready-made feast the aspect of the poor is pitiable 
to behold ; they endeavour to sell to you penny dolls, 
remembrances of the Derby ; to induce you to play at 
Aunt Sally, to black your boots. Nearly all of them 
resemble wretched, hungry, beaten, mangy dogs, 
waiting for a bone, without hope of finding much on 
it. Thc}^ arrived on foot during the night, and count 



THE DERBY. 30 

upon dining off the crumbs from tl;e great feast. 
Many are lying on the ground among the feet of the 
passers-by, and sleep open-mouthed, face upwards. 
Their countenances have an expression of stupidity and 
of painful hardness. The majority of them have 
bare feet, all are terribly dirty, and most absurd- 
looking; the reason is that they wear gentlemen's 
old clothes, worn-out fashionable dresses, small bon- 
nets, formerly worn by young ladies. The sight of 
these cast-off things, which have covered several bodies, 
becoming more shabby in passing from one to the 
other, always makes me uncomfortable. To wear 
these old clothes is degrading; in doing so the human 
being shows or avows that he is the offscouring of 
society. Among us a peasant, a workman, a labourer, 
is a different man, not an inferior person ; his blouse 
belongs to him, as my coat belongs to me — it has 
suited no one but him. This employment of ragged 
clothes is more than a peculiarity ; the poor resign 
themselves here to be the footstool of others. 

One of these women, with an old shawl which 
appeared to have been dragged in the gutter, with 
battered head- gear, which had been a bonnet, made 
limp by the rain, with a poor, dirty, pale baby in her 
arms, came and prowled round our omnibus, picked up 
a castaway bottle, and drained the dregs. Her second 
girl, who could walk, also picked up and munched a 
rind of melon. We gave them a shilling and cakes. 
The humble smile of thankfulness they returned, it is 
impossible to describe. They had the look of saying, 
like Sterne's poor donkey, '' Do not beat me, I beseecli 
you, — yet you may beat me if you wish." Their coun- 
tenances were burned, tanned by the sun ; the mother 
had a scar on her right cheek, as if she had been 



40 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

struck by a boot ; botb of them, the child in par- 
ticular, were grown wild and stunted. The great 
social mill crushes and grinds here, beneath, its steel 
gearing, the lowest human stratum. 

However, a bell rings and the race is about to begin. 
The three or four hundred policemen clear the course ; 
the stands are filled and the meadow in front of them 
is but a large black patch. We ascend to our places ; 
nothing seems grandiose. At this distance the crowd is 
an ant-heap ; the horsemen and the carriages which 
move forward and cross each obher resemble beetles, 
May-bugs, large sombre drones on a green cloth. 
The jockeys in red, in blue, in yellow, in mauve, form a 
small group apart, like a swarm of butterflies which 
has alighted. Probably I am wanting in enthusiasm, 
but I seem to be looking at a game of insects. Thirty- 
four run ; after three false starts they are oif ; fifteen 
or twenty keep together, the others are in small groups, 
and one sees them moving the length of the ring. To 
the eye the speed is not very great ; it is that of a 
railway train seen at the distance. of half a league; in 
that case the carriages have the appearance of toy- 
coaches which a child draws tied to a string ; cer- 
tainly, the impression is not stronger here, and it is a 
mistake to speak either of a hurricane or of a whirl- 
wind. During several minutes, the brown patch, 
strewn with red and bright spots, moves steadily over 
the distant green. It turns ; one perceives the first 
group approach. '^ Hats off" I '* and all heads are un- 
covered, and every one rises ; a repressed hurrah 
pervades the stands. The frigid faces are on fire ; 
brief, nervous gestures suddenly stir the phlegmatic 
bodies; below, in the betting-ring the agitation is 
extraordinarj^ — like a general St. Yitus's dance ; pic- 



THE DERBY. 41 

ture a mass of puppets receiving an electric shock, and 
gesticulating witli all their members like mad sema- 
phores. But the most curious spectacle is the human 
tide which instantaneously and in a body, pours forth 
and rolls over the course behind the runners, like a 
wave of ink ; the black and motionless crowd has 
suddenly melted and become molten ; in a moment 
it spreads itself abroad in vast proportions till the eye 
cannot follow it, and appears in front of the stands. 
The policemen make a barrier in two or three ranks, 
using force when necessary to guard the square to 
which the jockeys and horses are led. Measures are 
taken to weigh and see that all is right. 

There is one imposing moment, when the horses are 
not more than two huadred paces of; in a second the 
speed becomes suddenly perceptible, and the cluster 
of riders and horses rushes onward, this time like a 
tempest. 

A horse, of which little is known, has won, and very 
narrowly; the betting against him was 40 to 1 ; 01 
the contrary, it was 3 to 1 or 9 to 2 against the two 
favourites ; hence there were miscalculations and ex- 
plosions. The prize, with its accessories, amounts to 
£6,775 ; bets included, the owner wdll have won 
nearly £40,000. We are told of enormous losses — 
£20,000, £50,000 ; last year a colonel committed 
suicide after the great race because he saw that he 
was bankrupt ; if he had awaited the result of the 
others he would have won enough to pay all. The 
proprietor of one of the private stands shouted at the 
moment of departure, " Everything that I have just 
made on Buckstone." Several cabmen have lost their 
horses and their vehicles, which they risked in bets. 

To my thinking, these bets are to the mind what 



4.2 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

spirits are to the palate — an, indispensable stimulant 
for heavy and rough, frames ; they require violent 
impressions, the sensation of a prodigious risk ; add to 
that the combative and daring instinct; every wager is 
a duel, and every large bet a danger. As for the 
reasons which render the passion for horses and races 
so widespread and so national, it appears to me we 
must seek for them in the gymnastic and rural life ; 
people in easy circumstances, or who are rich, spend a 
great part of the year in the country ; in a miry 
country locomotion is not pleasant save on horseback ; 
their temperament necessitates much physical exercise; 
all these habits lead to the Derby day, which is their 
chosen festival. 

We descend ; there is hustling and crushing in the 
staircases, at the refreshment counters ; but most of the 
carriages are provisioned for the day, and the people 
feast in the open air in small knots. Good humour 

and unreserved merriment ; classes mingle ; P , one 

of our party, has met his usual coachman at table with 
a gentleman, two ladies, and a child. The gentleman 
had employed and then invited the coachman ; the 
coachman introduces P , who is amicabl}^ com- 
pelled to drink port, sherry, stout, and ale. In fact, 
to-day it is hail fellow well met; but this lasts for a daj?- 
only, after the manner of the ancient saturnalia. On 
the morrow distinctions of rank will be as strong as 
ever, and the coachman will be respectful, distant, as is 
his wont. Another of our friends perceives a gentle- 
man of his acquaintance, who has come in an omnibus, 
bringing with him his daughter and his lady acquaint- 
ances — eight ladies in all ; stopped in passing, we are 
all obliged to drink and eat ; our reception is frank, 
jovial, and cordial ; this gentleman, who had never 



THE DERBY. 43 

seen me before, invites me to visit Lim in the country. 
Still, over the whole downs, jaws are at work, bottles are 
emptied, and towards evening the carnival is in full 
swing. Twenty-four gentlemen triumphantly range 
on their omnibus seventy-five bottles which they have 
emptied. Groups pelt each other with chicken-bones, 
lobster-shells, pieces of turf. Two parties of gentlemen 
have descended from their omnibuses and engaged in a 
fight, ten against ten ; one of them gets two teeth 
broken. There are humorous incidents : three men and 
a lady are standing erect in their carriage ; the horses 
move on, they all tumble, the lady with her legs in the 
air ; peals of laughter follow. Gradually the fumes of 
wine ascend to the heads ; these people so proper, so 
delicate, indulge in strange conduct ; gentlemen ap- 
proach a carriage containing ladies and young girls, 
and stand shamefully against the wheels ; the mother 
tries to drive them away with her parasol. One of our 
party who remained till midnight saw many horrors 
which I cannot describe ; tlie animal nature had full 
vent. There is nothing exaggerated in Eubens's *' Ker- 
mess '' in the Louvre. The instincts are the same, and 
are equally unbridled ; only, in place of portly, over- 
flowing, and ruddy forms, picture to yourself faces 
which remain grave, and well-cut modern garments. 
The contrast between the natural and the artificial 
human being — between the gentleman who, by habit, 
and mechanically, continues grave, and the beast which 
explodes, is grotesque. 

On our return, the road is hidden by dust ; portions 
of fields have been reddened by feet ; everybody re- 
turns frightfully dirty, and powdered with white ; 
there are drunken people along the whole road ; up to 
eight o'clock in the evening they might be seen stag- 



44 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

gering and sick at Hyde Park Corner ; their comrades 
support them, laughing, and the spectators' faces do 
not betoken disgust. To-day everything is allowable ; 
it is an outlet for a year of repression. 

About eleven o'clock in the evening we proceed to 
Cremorne Gardens, a sort of Bal Mabille, and where 
the folly of the day is continued throughout the night. 
At the entrance is crowding and jostling ; a band of 
English force their way through, crying, " Make room 
for the Japanese Ambassadors." Within, especially at 
the turnings, the crowd is terrible, but one can find 
breathing space in sombre recesses. All the men are 
well or properly dressed ; the women are harlots, but 
of a higher class than those of the Strand ; they wear 
bright shawls, w^hite stuffs of gauze or tulle, red cloaks, 
new bonnets ; there is a dress which has cost £12 ; 
but the faces are rather faded, and sometimes, in the 
crowd, they raise terrible cries — the cries of a screech- 
owl. What is most comical, and proves their state of 
excitement, is their notion of pinching people, particu- 
larly foreigners. One of our party, who is forty years 
old, being sharply pinched and otherwise scandalised, 
leaves the place. Another woman beats a gentleman 
on the back with her fists for having trodden on her 
foot ; he laughs, and all the on-lookers are pleased. 
They are decidedly good-natured folks ; I saw no one 
lose temper in the scuffle ; and they were provoked ; 
one of my French friends imprudently jeered loudly ; 
this must be witnessed in order to comprehend the 
joyous rustic festivals of the sixteenth century, Shake- 
speare's " Merry England," the abounding primitive 
sap of the tree which Puritanism has clipped, pruned, 
and rendered rigid as well as straight. 

We sat down near three young women at a side- 



CREMORNE GARDENS, 45 

table, and we offered them sherry and beer ; they did 
not drink too much. Our book-English and their 
emphasised speech became mixed in a ludicrous jumble. 
One of them is the gayest and most playful of crea- 
tures ; I have never seen animal spirits equally redun- 
dant ; another, modest, rather pretty, slightly sad, is a 
milliner, and lives by her needle; she has a friend who 
spends the Sundays with her ; I looked carefully at 
her, and saw that she had the making of an amiable 
and honest woman in her like any other. In what lies 
the chance ? It is impossible to state their number 
in London ; it has been put at 50,000. Certain houses 
are filled with them from top to bottom. We escorted 
them to the gate, and paid for their cab?. Our con- 
veyance returned through streets, crescents, squares, 
which I did not recognise. A sepulchral glare illu- 
mines the empty Babel, and covers the colossal archi- 
tectures with the whiteness of a winding- sh et. The 
dense, unwholesome air seems to be still impifgnated 
with human exhalations ; at intervals, W3 perceive a 
hungry woman loitering, a poor wretch in rags, the 
feet covered with cloth. While walking through the 
nightly procession of the Haymarket, I thought about 
the Argyll Rooms, a sort of pleasure cas no which I 
had visited the night before ; the sped acle of debau- 
chery here leaves no other impression than one of 
misery and degradation. There is no brilliancy, dash, 
and liveliness about it, as in France ; when a gentle- 
man wishes to dance, a master of the ceremonies, with 
a badge and a white tie, goes to find a partner for him ; 
the two often dance together without exchanging a 
word. These poor girls are olten beautiful, many have 
a sweet and honest look ; all dance very properly, 
smile a little, and do not gesticulate ; they are in low 



46 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

dresses, but when dancing they keep their cloaks on. As 
to the men, their external appearance is that of leading 
merchants, wharfingers, middle-class manufacturers, or 
their sons, their foremen, who have foresaken their 
accounts, their commerce, and their coal. They like a 
gaudy show, an illumination in coloured glass, women 
in full dress, showy and variegated dresses, white 
shawls embroidered with red flowers and exotic birds. 
They have plenty of money ; a bottle of champagne 
costs twelve shillings ; the price of the evening's 
amusement may be £6. A tragical thing is that 
men and women both drink, and begin by intoxication 
— it is the brutality and destitution which first meet 
together in traversing unreason, imbecility, and stupor. 
One returns deeply grieved, with a bitter and profound 
feeling of human grossness and helplessness ; society is 
a fine edifice, but in the lowest story, what a sink of 
impurity ! Civilisation polishes man ; but how tena- 
cious is the bestial instinct ! I dare not yet pronounce 
judgment ; however, it seems to me that the evil and 
the good are greater here than in France. 



V. 



TYPICAL ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN. 

A T bottom the essential thing in a country is man, 
-^^ Since my arrival I have made a collection of types, 
and I class them with those which I had collected last 
year. As the result of experience, the best method in 
my eyes is always that of artists and of naturalists ; 
to note each face or very salient expression, follow its 
shades, its debasements, and its combinations ; to verify 
its repetition in several individuals ; to separate in this 
way the leading characteristic traits, comparing, inter- 
preting, and classifying them. Painters and romance 
writers act thus by instinct, when by means of some 
personages they furnish us v/ith an epitome of their 
era and of their society. Botanists and zoologists act 
thus on system when, choosing some plants or some 
animals whose characters are well marked, they ex- 
hibit to us in five or six representative types, all the 
species of a class. 

Seated on a bench in a public walk, or stationed in 
the morning at the outlet from a railway-station, 
French eyes, accustomed to French physiognomies 
very quickly perceive difierences ; the memory keeps 
them in view, although the intelligence cannot, as yet, 
clearly comprehend them. One continues to do this 



48 KGTES ON ENGLAND. 

daily at table, in a railway-carriage, in an omnibus, at 
an evening party, during a visit, in the city, in the 
country. At the end of some days certain new types, 
rare in France, common here, arise and stand forth ; 
week after week, they become distinct, acquire com- 
pleteness, call forth questions and answers, fit into one 
another, and end by forming a whole. Now, consider 
that in order to describe them it is often necessary to 
exhibit them in all their prominence — that is to say, 
in their excess, and that the excess is never the rule. 
The pure type, such as it can be rendered by pen or 
pencil, is an exception ; in Nature it is almost always 
more or less changed. But in Nature its degrees and 
varieties are grouped around, and in accordance with it, 
while making the requisite deductions, the reader and 
spectator can picture it to themselves without very 
great incorrectness. Arranged in groups, the following 
are those which have struck me the most : — 

I. The robust individual, largely and solidly built, 
the fine colossus, at times six feet high and broad in 
proportion. This is very common among soldiers, 
notably among the Life Guards, a select body of men. 
Their countenance is fresh, blooming, their flesh mag- 
nificent : it might be supposed they had been chosen for 
an exhibition of human products, like picked prize beets 
and cauliflowers. They have a fund of good humour, 
sometimes of good nature, generally of awkwardness. 
Their foppery is of a special kind. In light scarlet 
jacket, with a little cane in hand, they strut along 
displaying their shape and the lower part of their 
back; the distinct parting in their pomaded hair is 
seen under their small undress cap. One of them, 
stationary at a street corner, well set up, the shoulders 



ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN. 49 

down, majestically displays himself to the street boys. 
In point of mass they are monuments ; but there may 
be too much of a good thing, and movement is so 
essential to matter ! Other monuments, rather less 
tall, but even fresher and more varnished, are the 
servants of a great house. They vrear white cravats 
with large faultless bows, scarlet or canary-coloured 
knee-breeches, are magnificent in shape and amplitude ; 
their calves especially are enormous. In the fashion- 
able neighbourhoods, beneath the vestibule, about five 
o'clock in the evening, the butler seated, newspaper 
in hand, sips a glass of port ; around him, ushers, 
corded lackeys, footmen with their sticks, gaze with an 
indolent and a lordly air upon the middle>class passers- 
by. The coachmen are prodigiously broad-shouldered 
and developed ; how many yards of cloth must be re- 
quired to clothe such figures ? These are the favouriles 
of creation, the best fed, the most easy-going, all 
chosen and picked in order to act as specimens of the 
nation's phj^sique. In the great houses their clothing 
is found them ; the two lackeys must be of equal height, 
like two horses. Each of them states his height in the 
newspaper advertisements ; 5 feet 9 inches and a half, 
5 feet 11 inches. So much goes for the size of the 
calves, so much for the shapeliness of the ancles, so 
much for the commanding presence ; the ornamental 
look is worth to them as much as an extra £20 a year. 
They are taken care of, and they take care of them- 
selves in consequence. Their table is nearly as well 
served as that of their masters ; they have several 
kinds of wine and beer, and hours of relaxation. It is 
necessary that their exterior should proclaim the 
wealth and style of the house ; they know this, and 
they are proud of it. However, their stuck-up airs 



50 NOTES ON ENGLAND, 

have become proverbial. Thackeray has drawn upon 
them for several characters in his novels, and has 
made them the subject of one romance. Punch has 
caricatures on the same subject ; a valet gives his 
master warning because he has seen his lordship on the 
top of an omnibus, another because the colour of the 
livery does not suit his complexion. The lackey be- 
hind a carriage is so fine that he resembles a big doll ; 
street boys stick pins into his calves to see if they are 
real or stuffed. 

There is the same athletic and full- fleshed type 
among the gentlemen; I know four or five specimens 
among my acquaintances. Sometimes the excess of 
feeding adds a variety; this was true of a certain 
gentleman in my rail wa}^- carriage on the Derby day ; 
large ruddy features, with flabby and pendent cheeks, 
large red whiskers, blae eyes without expression, an 
enormous trunk in a short light jacket, noisy respira- 
tion ; his blood gave a tinge of pink to his hands^ his 
neck, his temple, and even underneath his hair ; when 
he compressed his eyelids, his physiognomy was as dis- 
quieting and heavy as that seen in the portraits of 
Henry YIII. ; when in repose, in presence of this mass 
of flesh, one thought of a beast for the butcher, and 
quietly computed twenty stones of meat. Towards 
fifty, owing to the effect of the same diet seasoned 
with port wine, the figure and the face are spoiled, the 
teeth protrude, the physiognomy is distorted, and turn 
to horrible and tragical caricature, as, for example, a 
fat and fiery general at the Yolunteer Review in Hyde 
Park, who had the air of a bulldog and had a brick- 
dust face, spotted with violet excrescences. The last 
variety is seen among the common people, where spirits 
take the place of port, among other pleices in the low 



ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN. 51 

streets which border the Thames ; several apoplectical 
and swollen faces, whereof the scarlet hue turns almost 
to black, worn-out, blood-shot eyes like raw lobsters ; 
the brute brutalised. Lessen the quantity of blood 
and fat, while retaining the same bone and structure, 
and increasing the countrified look; large and wild 
beard and moustache, tangled hair, rolling eyes, trucu- 
lent muzzle, big knotted hands ; this is the primitive 
Teuton issuing from his woods ; after the portly animal, 
after the overfed animal, comes the fierce animal, the 
English bull. 

All that is rare enough ; these are the extremes of 
the type. Much more common is the labouring animal, 
the great bony body, full of protuberances and projec- 
tions, not well set up, ungainly, clumsy, slightly auto- 
matic, but of strong build, and as capable of resistance 
as of efiPort. It is not less common among gentlemen, 
clergymen, the liberal professions, than among the 
people. I have three specimens of it before mj^ eyes. 
(1.) A tall clergyman, stifi", frigid, and who will never 
thaw ; gestures of a semaphore, narrow and dogmatic 
opinions, yet charitable, and who demonstrates his 
devotedness ; this stout framework was required to 
endure for thirty years the apostolic profession ; con- 
stant sermons, visits in noisome lanes, night-watches, 
long walks on foot in the mud of the suburbs. (2.) A 
member of Parliament, with the shoulders, feet, and 
hands of a carman, large white teeth too close together, 
strong jaws which scarcely open to speak, irregular 
and very marked traits, his whole person largely and 
rudely shaped as if by strokes of a pruning-knife, and 
insufiiciently cut down ; the modern dress, the gloves, 
the blue cravat, the dazzlingly white linen, are out of 
place on these muscles, wluch might draw a diaj^, and 



52 NOTES ON ENGLAND, 

engage in a boxing match. His eye is dim, his gestures 
are few, he is sparing of speech, he has no wit, nor, it 
seems, any ideas ; he is not a leader, he is but a mem- 
ber of a party, he votes and works. But for the long 
night sittings, for the scrutiny of blue-books, and the 
verification of accounts, for meetings, committees, 
clubs, for wearying and indefinite labour he is well- 
built and admirable. (8.) The third is an Englishman 
of the middle-class, whom I met yesterday in an 
omnibus with his family. He was thirty-two, dressed 
in new clothes, with an income, I should suppose, of 
from £480 to £600 a year ; had an air of solidity and 
of resolution, being a good machine, well mounted, well 
constructed, well kept, untiring and regular, the true 
budding paterfamilias ; cold in appearance, correct, 
motionless, slightly heavy, and dull. At his side, a 
young wife in black velvet, too showy bonnet and 
finery, innocent and pleasing, always occupied with her 
baby, which is very white, over-abounding in flesh, 
health, and fat, with stuck*out and embroidered petti- 
coats which make a bunch and a display. In front is 
the nurse, thirty-five years old, who strives to please 
and to smile respectfully. That is a good specimen of 
an English family ; the husband energetically, con- 
scientiousty, and without yawning drags his conjugal 
chariot ; his happiness must consist in taking tea, with 
slippers on, at his home in the evening ; he will have 
many children who, not knowing how to gain a liveli- 
hood, will emigrate, and who will require to have a 
constitution like his own to undergo their hardships. 
Place in this powerful frame of bones and muscles the 
lucid, calm, active intelligence developed hy special 
education, or by complete education, and you will have 
the fine variety of the same type, the serious, capable 



ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN 53 

man, worthy of commanding, in whom, during the 
hour of need, one might and one ought to place confi- 
dence, who will accomplish difficult tasks. In spick- 
span new clothes, in too light a dress, the disparity 
between the habit and its wearer is not far from being 
grotesque. But fancy him on the bridge of a vessel, 
in battle, or simply in a counting-house at the head of 
twenty clerks, on the bench and pronouncing decisions, 
governing fortunes or lives, he will be beautiful, 
morally beautiful. This body can contain the soul 
without succumbing. 

Many of the women have the same power of growth 
and structure, more frequently indeed than in France ; 
out of eve'ry ten young girls one is admirable, and upon 
five or six a naturalist painter would look with pleasure. 
On horseback especially, and in full gallop, they are 
amazons, not only by their skill and the firmness of 
their seat, but on account of their figure and their 
health. In their presence one thinks of the natural 
form of life, Grecian and gymnastic. Yesterday one 
of them in a drawing-room, tall, with well-developed 
bust and shoulders, blooming cheeks, active, and with- 
out too much expression, seemed to me to be made to 
live in the avenues of a park, or in the great hall of 
a castle, like her sister, the antique statue, in the free 
air of the mountains, or under the portico of a templf 
upon the sea-shore ; neither the one nor the other could 
breathe in our small Parisian dwellings. The mauve 
silk of the dress follows the form from the neck to the 
hips, descends and spreads forth like a lustrous wave ; 
in order to depict her as a goddess it would require the 
palette of Rubens, his rosy red spread over a tint of 
milk, his large masses of flesh fixed by one dash of the 
brush ; only here the contour is more severe, and the 



54 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

head is nobler. Lady Marj^ Wortley Montague, who 
came to see tlie Court of the Regent in France, 
severely rallied our slim, painted, affected beauties, 
and proudly held up as a contrast " the natural charms 
and the lively colours of the unsullied complexions " 
of "English women. By way of compensation one may 
sometimes recall this mocking sketch by Hamilton : — 
*' Madam Wetenhall was properly speaking a beauty 
wholly English : permeated with lily and roses, with 
snow and milk, as regards colours : formed of wax 
with regard to her arms and her hands, her throat and 
her feet, but altogether without soul or air. Her visage 
was the tiniest, but it was always the same visage ; one 
might say that she took it out of the case in the 
morning and put it back in the evening, without 
having used it during the day. What else would you 
expect? Nature had made her a doll from infancy, 
and the white Wetenhall remained a doll till her 
death.'^ Yet, even when the physiognomy and the 
form are commonplace, the whole satisfies the mind ; 
a solid bony structure, and upon it healthy flesh, con- 
stitute what is essential in a living creature; the 
impression is the same as that produced by a house 
built of well-hewn stone, whereof the plaster and polish 
are new ; one does not require that it should be archi- 
tecturally perfect nor even elegant ; it will withstand 
bad weather, it is comfortable, suits its occupant ; that 
sufl&ces. 

There are two probable causes. The one, which is 
of a special character, the hereditary conformation of 
the race; the other, which- is the custom of open-air 
living and bodily exercise. A Revieiv spoke recently 
about the rude, unfeeling health which slightly startles 
delicate foreign ladies, and attributes it to riding on 



ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN. 55 

horseback and the long walks which English ladies 
take in the country. To these advantages are joined 
several inconveniences : the fair complexion is easily 
and quickly spoilt ; in the case of many young ladies, 
the nose reddens early ; they have too many children, 
and this deteriorates them. You marry a blonde, 
slender, and clear-complexioned woman ; ten years 
afterwards you will perhaps have at your side a house- 
keeper, a nurse, a sitting hen. I have in my mind 
two or three of these matrons, broad, stiff, and destitute 
of ideas ; red face, eyes the colour of blue china, huge 
white teeth — forming the tricolour flag. In other cases 
the type becomes exaggerated : one sees extraordinary 
asparagus-sticks planted in spreading dresses. More- 
over, two out of every three have their feet shod with 
stout masculine boots ; and as to the long projecting 
teeth, it is impossible to train oneself to endure them. 
Is this a cause, or an effect, of the carnivorous regime ? 
The too ornate and badly- adjusted dress completes these 
disparities. It consists of violet or dark crimson silks, 
of grass- green flowered gowns, blue sashes, jewellery — 
the whole employed sometimes to caparison gigantic 
jades who recall discharged heavy cavalry horses, some- 
times vast well-hooped butts, which burst in spite of 
their hoops. Of this cast was a lady, in Hyde Park, 
one of these days, on horseback, followed by her groom. 
She was fifty-five, had several chins, the rest in pro- 
portion, an imperious and haughty mien; the whole 
shook at the slightest trot, and it was hard not to 
laugh. 

Another specimen is the children. I have seen Kton 
and Harrow-on-the-Hill. The small ones in the nursery 
are living flowers — full-blown roses ; in the country 
especially, the large cherub cheeks, the firmness and 



55 NOTjES on ENGLAND. 

quantity of the flesli proclaim the abounding sap which 
will afterwards produce a sturdy fellow. About seven 
and upwards, it is not intelligence which predominates, 
but physical and moral energy. The manner is often 
rude, very unamiable ; one thinks of young bull-dogs. 

Eor example, the young ones of H and M , 

sons of great families, seem to be and are simple cubs 
averse to culture, good only for hunting and school- 
fights. An observer said to me — -"A young English- 
man is ferocious, unconquerable; the blood of the 
Scandinavian rover is in his veins ; hence the usage of 
the birch ; in our schools we could not dispense v/ith 
it.^' He is not very precocious and vivacious, but has 
plenty of daring and tenacity. George Eliot has given 
a very good specimen of this in the character of Tom 
in " The Mill on the Floss." Very often he is a block- 
head ; the caricatures have represented this trait. A 
little fellow of eight says to his sister of eighteen, 
*' Charlotte, lend me your paint-box." " No, sir, you 
know how you spoiled it the last time." '^Yery well, 
then I shall put my guinea-pig on your neck." And 
he raises the guinea-pig to perform his threat. The 
animal instincts are too powerful in him, he is too full 
of health, he hates books, he neither will nor can learn. 
He prefers eating, boxing, playing at cricket, riding 
on horseback. Owing to another effect of the same 
instincts, he is brave, patient, hardy, inured to blows 
and risks of all kinds. The author of " Tom Brown's 
School-days " says, " It is strange to see how fond 
nearly all young English boys are of danger; you 
will find ten ready to join in a hunt, climb a tree, 
swim across a stream, if there be a chance of their 
breaking their necks or drowning themselves ; and out 
of them you will not find more than one to play at 



ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN. 57 

marbles, remain on dry land, or batlie within his 
depth." Young Tom, when going to school, passes 
a very cold night on the top of the coach, and, frozen 
though he be, he persists in doing so, because he has 
the '' silent pleasure, so dear to every Englishman, of 
enduring, resisting, and struggling with something, 
and not giving way." I can call to mind fifty similar 
minor facts. On the whole, I am certain that the 
animal physique, the primitive man, such as Nature 
bequeathed to civilisation, is of a stronger and rougher 
species here. The following are some of these minor 
facts. During these days I have seen farm and draught 
horses in breweries and in two farms : they resemble 
elephants ; one of the farmers has twelve of them 
which cost from £50 to £60. They are the athletes 
of the species ; lustrous hair ; reins full of muscle, 
colossal cruppers. The smallest one among them is 
French, and the farmer says it is the weakest, the least 
capable of standing changes of temperature. Now, 
I have everywhere found this kind of consanguinity 
between the horse and the human being ; for example, 
follow it up successively in the Department of the Yar, 
at Orleans, in Normandy, and in England. On the 
other hand, a skilful physician who prescribes for a 
Frenchman here does not give him more than half 
a dose ; the English dose would be too strong for him, 
and would hurt him ; if you ask a chemist for a purge, 
he hands calomel to you ; an Englishman often keeps 
it by him, and takes a pill of it when his head feels 
rather heavy ; the medicines here might be compounded 
for French horses. In like manner their common 
wines, port, sherry, very hot, very spirituous, are loaded 
with brandy in addition ; this mixture deprives them 
of delicacy, yet if they were pure the English would 



58 NOTJES ON ENGLAND. 

consider them insipid ; our Bordeaux wines and even 
our Burgundies are too light for them. Amongst the 
middle class, ale, stout, or porter are preferred, espe- 
cially brandy and water, a kind of grog in which the 
half is spirit ; to please them it is necessary that the 
beverage should be rough or fiery, their palate must 
be either scratched or scraped. The same impression 
is made on trying their cookery, which, excepting that 
of their very fine clubs, and of the " Continental '* 
English, who keep a French or Italian cook, has no 
savour. I have purposely dined in twenty taverns, 
from the lowest to the highest, in London and else- 
where. I got large portions of fat meat and vegetables, 
without sauce ; one is amply and wholesomely fed, but 
one has no pleasure in eating. In the best Liverpool 
eating-house they do not know how to dress a fowl. 
If you would tickle your palate, there is a cruet filled 
with pickles, peppers, sauces, and Chili vinegar. I 
once inadvertently put two drops of it into my mouth. 
I might as well have swallowed a hot cinder. At 
Greenwich, having already partaken of plain whitebait, 
I helped myself to some out of a second dish ; it was 
devilled, and fitted for skinning the tongue. Lastly, 
on the coaches and on the bridge of the steamboats 
many gentlemen, and even ladies, remain out of choice 
in the wind and rain, exposed to be blown about and 
drenched ; the inclemencies of the weather please them. 
In my opinion, all these traits denote senses less delicate 
and a temperament more robust. 

Such a robust frame has vast wants. They consider 
us sober; yet we ought to consider them voracious. 
Economists say that on an average a Frenchman eats 
a sheep and a half yearly, and an Englishman four 
Bheep. At the tables of the eating-houses you are 



ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN. 59 

served witli a small piece of bread along with a very 
large helping of meat. Punch contains caricatures of 
juvenile gluttons : — ^* What a horrible life/' said a 
young girl on seeing two enormous pigs which were 
being fattened, " to do nothing but eat and sleep.'' 
Her brother of ten replies, " There is nothing in the 
world which I should like better." The exaggeration 
is clear, but it denotes a trait of manners. Yanbrugh 
in his '* Journey to London " had previously depicted 
the little gluttonous squire, a being unknown in France. 
From all time they have gloried in being meat-eaters 
and substantially fed ; in their eyes this was a privilege 
of their race and an aliment of their courage. Mr. 
Froude calls them *' a sturdy, high-hearted race, sound 
in body and fierce in spirit, and furnished with thews 
and sinews which, under the stimulus of those '' great 
shins of beef,' their common diet, were the wonder of 

the age Again and again, a few thousands of 

them carried dismay into the heart of France. Four 
hundred adventurers, vagabond apprentices from 
London, who formed a volunteer corps in the Calais 
garrison, were for years the terror of Normandy. In 
the very frolic of conscious power they fought and 
plundered without pay, without reward, except what 
they could win for themselves ; and when they fell at 
last they fell only when surrounded by six times their 
number, and were cut to pieces in careless desperation. 
Invariably, by friend and foe alike, the English are 
described as the fiercest people in all Europe (the 
English wild beasts, Benvenuto Cellini calls them), and 
this great physical power they owed to the profuse 
abundance in which they lived, and the soldiers' train- 
ing in which every man of them was bred from child- 
hood." 



60 NOTi:S ON ENGLAND. 

An Englishman with, whom I conversed at the Derby 
was influenced by the same principle in wholly dis- 
approving of temperance societies : according to him 
the race required stimulants ; even in India, where he 
had lived five years, the English would make a mistake 
in entirely abandoning spirituous liquors. " Our sailors 
cannot do without their glass of spirits. "We are 
eminently an energetic people; we require strong meat 
and drink to sustain our frames ; without them we 
should have no animal spirits ; it is on account of this 
regime that our mariners are so hardy and so brave. 
When they board, after discharging their pistols, they 
fling them at random on the enemy's deck, saying that 
they are certain to find them again after the victory.'' 
It is possible that he was right. Certain organisations 
are prodigal; there are chimneys which draw badly 
unless the fire be great ; besides, the climate, the fog, 
the large expenditure of physical and mental labour 
necessitate copious repasts ; an English workman, who 
does as much work with his own hands as a Frenchman 
and a half, and lives amidst the fog of Manchester, 
is a locomotive of which the boiler produces steam 
only by using spirits and meat. Pitt did not find two 
bottles of port wine too large a quantity to take with 
his dinner ; but I return to my types. 

II. The Phlegmatic : On him impressions are 
made without inducing expression, or, for a stronger 
reason, shock, agitation, explosion. This is exactly 
the opposite of southern petulance and passion. He 
has a frigid and starched air, the gestures of an auto- 
maton, motionless physiognomy, he speaks little, or not 
at all. B — , being introduced to a family, pays a visit, 
is beginning to chat with the mistress of the house ; 



ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN 6i 

the husband arrives, notices him on entering the door, 
walks silently across the room, his eyes turned in another 
direction, sits down, and after the lapse of a minute, 
says, " Glad to see you, sir/' Nothing more. At the 
end of five minutes he takes up a nevt^spaper and 
reads it. This was not churlishness ; he is hospitable 
and kind. An officer relates that an English admiral, 
after a long fight, forced the enemy's vessel to sur- 
render, and received the captain, whom he had made 
prisoner, on the poop, with the single phrase, " For- 
tune of war." This was politeness, but abbreviated, in 
laconic fashion. Here is a portion of a letter from one 
of my friends, after some weeks' stay : — " Shall I tell 
you what has struck me the most in this country ? It 
is the inertness of the nervous system. The other day 
I witnessed a game of cricket on Kew Green ; seven 
or eight English boys were there pitching the ball. Cer- 
tainly they could not help blundering and missing now 
and then. Yet, during upwards of an hour and a half 
there was not a single cry, not a single remark made in 
a loud voice and in a tone of reproach. They pitched 
the ball about, changed places, doing it all with the 
utmost calmness, and generally in silence. You must 
have remarked that the English speak exceedingly low. 
An Italian society into which I strayed by chance, 
actually deafened me ; I had become accustomed to the 
moderate tone of English voices. My coachman, the 
other day, thought fit to rattle down a mews at full 
speed ; he frightened two carriage horses which were 
being harnessed to the carriage. The groom advanced, 
took hold of the bits, and calmed the horses. Not a 
single word j^assed betv/een these two men. Picture to 
yourself the same scene in France — the taunts of the 
lackey, proud of his master; the blackguardism of the 



62 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

jealous menial, &c. That is, my dear friend, wliat I 
have seen of most significance in England, and by 
means of which I figure to myself English liberty. 
These people have water mixed with their blood, 
exactly as their cattle are deficient in juice. Compare 
the gigots of St. Leonard with those of London. That 
is why they are allowed to combine together, to brawl, 
to print what they please. They are primitive animals, 
cold-blooded, and with a sluggish circulation." 

Among the persons with whom I have associated 
there are two or three very well instructed, highly 
educated men, who have written and who talk well. 
But talking is distasteful to them. They do the 
honours of their house and take part in the most in- 
teresting conversations almost without saying anything 
— not because they are inattentive, wearied, absent ; they 
listen, that suffices them. If they are addressed directly 
they summarise their experience in a sentence. That 
debt discharged, they become silent again, and this ex- 
cites no surprise ; it is merely said in explanation of 
their manner, ** He is a man of few words." Now, 
join to this disposition the robust and slightly rough 
temperament which I have just described, and you 
will have a particular variety-^that is, the sluggish, 
slow, heavy, dull, material one, unfit for all fine cul- 
ture, satisfied with its mechanical occupation, the true 
Flemish boor of Van Ostade. The following is a bio- 
graphy which exhibits this character, combined with a 
practical aptitude and a special talent : — 

John S. is the son of a workman in the environs 
cf Bristol ; he has laboured from infancy in his father's 
small smithy ; possessing a turn for mechanics, he in- 
vented a species of bolt for affixing the rails to the 
sleepers ; on that account a wealthy and well-brought- 



ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN. 63 

up gentleman, who knew him, offered him money for 
the purpose of establishing a factory. John consulted 
his father, who had remained a mere workman, nar- 
row-minded, and who refused to enter into partner- 
ship. John persevered, studied hard, learned what he 
required in mechanics, spent much time in practising, 
received the funds, and established the factory ; last 
year it returned £20,000 net profit to the partners. 
At present he is twenty-eight ; he is rich already, 
and spends the day in the following manner. In the 
morning he goes to the factory, inspects, supervises, 
takes a file in hand to show the clumsy workman how 
to use it properly, returns home frightfully dirty, 
washes himself, and breakfasts. He does likewise in 
the afternoon. He dines. In the evening he seats 
himself in a small neighbouring tavern, drinks six- 
pennyworth of beer, smokes his pipe, and returns 
home to go to bed at ten o'clock. For three or four 
years he has had an intended, and does not marry 
her ; yet she is twenty-four, he loves her, he in- 
tends to marry — he will marry her ; but he is 
sluggish ; considers himself comfortable as he is ; this 
is inertia, moral inertia. As for her, she waits 
patiently, she is gentle, submissive. He goes to see 
her on Saturday night, makes short excursions with 
her, visits friends ; both sleep away from home, return- 
ing together on Monday. All this is quite proper ; 
custom permits these freedoms, and no one takes 
notice of them. ^N^evertheless he has neither an idea, 
nor any curiosity ; he can barely spell ; he never reads, 
his own condition alone interests him ; a shabby coat 
for w^ork, and a good coat for Sunday ; nothing beyond 
that ; his circle is traced out ; he rests like a snail in 
its shell. Yet, on the advice of the gentleman, who 



64 NOTFS ON ENGLAND. 

is his partner, lie has just built himself a fine house, 
but he is not at his ease in it. George Eliot, in her 
novels, has admirably painted these heavy, narrow- 
viewed natives so common in England, who remain 
fixed, and, as it were tethered, in animal, manual, or local 
life, preserve a tradition, and do not swerve from it 
except at intervals, as an exception, and only on one 
point. Witness also the landlord, John Willet, in. 
*' Barnaby Rudge," by Dickens, an excellent carica- 
ture. The personage is half ox, half bull ; in this 
solid mass of flesh the few and brief ideas are, as it 
were, congealed, and no new idea gains entrance. On 
the contrary, when the person is an intelligent and a 
cultured gentleman, the phlegmatic temperament im- 
parts to him a perfectly noble air. I have several of 
them in my memory, with pale complexion, light blue 
eyes, regular features, constituting one of the - finest 
types of the human species. There is no excess of 
cavalierism, of glitter, and gallantry, after the style of 
the French gentleman ; one is conscious of a mind 
wholly self-contained; and which cannot lose its 
balance. They elevate this quality of their tempera- 
ment into a virtue ; according to them the chief merit 
of a man is always to have a clear and cool head. 
They are right; nothing is more desirable in misfor- 
tune and in danger, and this is truly one of their 
national traits, the gift by which they succeed. A 
French ofiiccr who fought in the Crimea related to me 
how an English battalion of infantry destroyed two 
Russian regiments ; the Russians fired incessantly, and 
did not lose a foot of ground, but they were excited 
and aimed badly ; on the contrary, the English infantry 
avoided undue haste, took steady aim, and missed 
scarcely a single shot. The human being is ten times 



ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN. 65 

stronger when his pulse continues calm, and when his 
judgment remains free. The consequences and the 
shades of a type are innumerable. If one starts from 
the principle that in the case of the phlegmatic, move- 
ment and expression are wanting, rare, or unwonted, 
one will understand the following figures ; I copy 
sketches taken on the spot : 

The swell, or dandy of the second class. — Absolutely 
a cut from a plate of fashions ; everything is bran new, 
and most exact in his linen and attire ; the whiskers, 
moustache, and hair come from the hairdresser's hands, 
and he himself has the air of a hairdresser's puppet ; 
his clear complexion and his glassy eyes would suit a 
waxen face ; rigid in attitude, measured in movement, 
he will not disarrange a fold of his cravat ; his clothes 
are put on him as if to show them off. The diversified, 
unexpected mos^ements, the pleasing, gay, and amusing 
physiognomy which could alone render this specimen 
endurable, are wholly wanting, and he remains but a 
stufied fool. The stiff personage who walks as if he 
had swallowed a poker. Yery common among clergy- 
men. The large machine, badly put together, whereof 
the wheels are rusty — witness many tall young folks, 
and also men of fifty, who have worked hard — all the 
parts composing them grate at being together. The 
gestures and the physiognomy have not the necessary 
agility, move maladroitly, at the wrong time, and with 
a discordant explosion. This is chiefly visible in the 
convulsive movement of the mouth. 

The timid. Finding expression difficult, he exag- 
gerates its difficulty. If he possess a little cleverness, 
his habitual silence sinks him still deeper in his inborn 
silliness ; if he possess much, he becomes moody, he 
li^os lonely in a world of inner sentiments to which 

F 



I 



66 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

lie forbids ingress to any one, and in proportion as lie 
feels himself more a stranger, lie concentrates him- 
self the more. These two descriptions of character 
are so frequent here that they cannot be noted. Not 
only young girls, but women of forty, are startled at 
a new face ; I w^as told of a lady of the highest class, 
accustomed to important ceremonies, and who becomes 
dumb, blushes when a stranger is introduced to her. 
There are men well-educated, even learned, having 
travelled, knowing several languages, who are em- 
barrassed in company ; one might live six months 
with them without detecting their merits ; they have 
neither the art nor the desire to display themselves ; 
to unseal their lips, a great shock, an urgent interest, 
are requisite. I know one of them who stammers 
in a drawing-room, and who on the following day has 
addressed eight meetings with great eloquence. This 
kind of awkwardness and bashfulness, wholly physical, 
is a peculiarity of Teutonic nations. On the other 
hand, an Italian, a Frenchman, speak naturally, with 
ease and confidence ; the Frenchman still more than 
the Italian, because he instantly becomes the comrade 
of his interlocutor. An old historian has remarked this 
trait, that the Frenchman is he, of all others, who 
speaks with least hesitation to kings and to princes. 
Owing to another effect of this temperament, the 
human being is backward, by no means precocious ; it 
dares not develop itself, it continues longest in the 
animal and infantine stage of existence ; it is often art- 
less, innocent, original. The physiognomy remains 
youthful here much later than amongst us, especially 
than at Paris, where it withers so quickly ; sometimes 
it remains open even in old age ; I recall at this mo- 
ment two old ladies with -white hair whose cheeks were 



ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN. 67 

smooth and softly rosy ; after an hour's conversation I 
discovered that their minds were as fresh as their com- 
plexions. Like every trait somewhat general, this one 
produces grotesques and masterpieces. The dignified 
stick ; bod}^ and mind puffed out ; plenty of principles. 
The bewildered, who opens the mouth idiotically and 
has the look of not understanding. The large fat 
heifer, lymphatic, with white eyelashes. The female 
goose, with large silly goggle eyes, long waist badly 
set up above expansions of crinoline. The young chit- 
tish girl, rosy, playful, with sparse locks over the neck, 
a real bird who incessantly laughs and chirps, and 
without more ideas than a bird. Dickens has pour- 
tray ed this type in Dora, the child- wife of David Cop- 
perfield. The blonde maiden with downcast eyes, 
purer than one of Kaffaelle's Madonnas, a sort of Eve, 
incapable of falling, whose voice is music, adorable in 
candour, gentleness, and goodness, and before whom 
one is tempted to lower the eyes out of respect. 
Since Virginia, Imogen, and the other women of 
Shakespeare or of his great contemporaries, to Esther 
and to the Agnes of Dickens, English literature has 
placed them in the foreground ; they are the most per- 
fect flower of the land. The purely virtuous woman, 
calm, serious, and whom temptation has never ap- 
proached, and whose life is planned in such a way as 
to banish all curiosity, every evil thought, every chance 
of stumbling. In this class many young Quakeresses 
are conspicuous ; with poke bonnets, or covered with a 
white veil, the subdued complexion of a nun. The ex- 
pression is that of a person who has lived in a moral 
enclosure without having ever had a notion of leaving it. 
As dress is a sort of expression, an exterior superim- 
posed upon other exteriors, it denotes what the physi- 



68 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

ognomy and gestures have already manifested — to wit, 
awkwardness, want of skill, of flexibility, of tact. As 
a general rule, costume ought to image the body, and 
here it nearly always does so badly. Two exceptions 
are the riding dress, the black habit which fits the 
shape, which is simple, devoid of ornament, and exhi- 
bits hardihood, strength, physical health ; the travelling 
dress, the little straw hat with a single ribbon, the 
plain gown, the small boots of solid leather, everything 
showing the good walker, without trace of coquetry, 
capable of ascending with her husband the top of a 
diligence, of being a man's real companion, and not a 
delicate troublesome doll. With the exception of these 
two costumes, their showy and overdone style of dress 
is that of a lorette or an upstart ; one is surprised to 
see such gear on the back of a young virtuous woman. 
In Hyde Park, on Sunday, the exaggeration of the 
dresses of the ladies or young girls belonging to the 
wealthy middle class is offensive ; bonnets resembling 
piled-up bunches of rhododendrons, or as white as 
snow, of extraordinary smallness, with packets of red 
flowers or of enormous ribbons ; gowns of shiny violet 
silk with dazzling reflections, or of starched tulle upon 
an expanse of petticoats stiff with embroidery ; immense 
shawls of black lace, reaching dow^n to the heels ; 
gloves of immaculate whiteness or bright violet; gold 
chains ; golden zones with golden clasps ; hair falling 
over the neck in shining masses. The glare is terrible. 
They seemed to have stepped out of a wardrobe, and to 
march past to advertise a magazine of novelties. Not 
that even ; for they do not know how to show off 
their dresses. They have the head firmly set on the 
neck, like the beadle in a procession ; their hair is too 
much plastered or too loose; their garments are dis- 



ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN, 69 

played upon theni as upon a wooden puppet. The 
crinoline is like a tub at the bottom, the cloaks are 
tucked up behind in clumsy and pretentious puffs ; 
there are not three pretty shapes. The white row of 
teeth is a crude patch on the red of the lips ; black 
feet, strongly shod, show themselves below the balloon 
petticoats. Thus bulged out, they walk along rustling ; 
their dress follows and precedes them like the ticking 
of a clock. Compared with the supple, easy, silent 
serpentine undulation of the Spanish dress and bearing, 
the movement here is energetic, discordant, jerking, 
like a piece of mechanism. 

III. — The last type is the active, energetic human 
being, capable of enterprise, of efforts, of endurance, of 
perseverance, and who loves effort as effort. The 
elements of such a character are numerous, and I have 
not reduced them to order. Turn, then, to particular 
instances — to examples. 

One day, when returning from a visit in the country, 
two young men asked me if I would take them in my 
fly to the station, offering to pay the half of the fly. 
Naturally I agreed to the first part of the proposal, and 
I declined the conclusion. We chatted. They were two 
brothers, the one nineteen, the other seventeen years 
of age ; they have ten brothers and sisters, and start 
for New Zealand ; they count upon being twelve 
years there, and returning with a fortune, becoming 
sheep farmers. It is impossible to reproduce the 
zeal, the ardour, the decision of their gestures and of 
their accent ; one was conscious of a superabundance 
of energy and of activity, overflowing animal spirits. 
They had the look of strong- limbed greyhounds, sniff- 
ing the air in full hunt. According to the elder, there 



70 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

are already cities of ten thousand inhabitants in !N'ew 
Zealand. With a capital of £2,000 one may bring 
back £20,000 at the end of twelve years. '' You will 
be thirty years old then. You will return at the pro- 
per time to marry." " Yes, sir." This was uttered 
with the most powerful tone, with an admirable juve- 
nile outburst. The first year he would learn his busi- 
ness ; then he would launch out, shift for himself. 
There one must be his own labourer. ^' Build, fell 
trees, plough, reap, pasture cattle, shear sheep, all with 
these hands ! " He laughed with the ruest and 
most joyous spirits. He has had some training ; he 
has lived on a farm, he has a slight acquaintance with 
applied mathematics, with German, but not with 
French, and he has travelled in France, in Grermany, 
in Switzerland ; his sentences are disjointed, sounding, 
and, as it were, shot forth : " Obliged to go to the 
colonies ; large family, you know ; obliged to look 
out for oneself." These two lively, hardy, enterprising 
young men pleased me ; that is a fine style of begin- 
ning life ; one risks much here ; the world is open, 
and one takes the cream of it. England remains the 
place to which the return will be made, the treasure to 
which all gravitates and flows back. The fortune 
once made, the zeal continues ; the children of a rich 
father are bound to work on account of their number, 
and because the law of inheritance awards the largest 
share to the eldest. Besides, whether rich or enriched, 
they find occupation in politics, associations local or 
general, public life. Labour always appears as the end 
or aim of labour. Amongst us, a fortune is made in 
order to retire, to rest, to remain unemployed, and to 
procure the means for children being so. 

Subtract youth : with calmer externals, the same 



ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN 71 

longing for working and doing subsists in mature age. 
On this head witness the story of a life known to me. 

M- ^ is the son of a small shopkeeper who had 

six children. The father caused him tq^ be educated as 
a practical engineer, and, as soon as the son was 
eighteen ordered him, not with harshness, but on prin- 
ciple, to provide for himself. Many parents here think 
that they are only bound to educate their children. 

W" went to Scotland, procuring a situation at £40 

a year. Some years afterwards he was sent to India to 
erect a lighthouse ; salary £300 a year. The light- 
house was well done; he returned, and erected a 
second ; salary £400 a year, and a present of £100. 
On his return, he worked at the construction of a, 
tubular bridge, made reports concerning it ; became 
secretary to a company in London— fixed salary, £500 ; 
he married a governess who had not a penny. At pre- 
sent he is secretary to a large establishment, and gets 
£600 a year. He goes there every day, and works at 
his desk for nine or ten hours at full steam. He writes 
from thirty to seventy letters, receives -nearly twenty- 
five visits, and inspects an infinity of objects and per- 
sons. Eeturned home, he helps to compile a dictionary 
of Grecian antiquities. In order to do that, he 
first perused the classics in translations ; then, aided 
and counselled by his learned friends, the undertakers 
of the dictionary, he succeeded in reading them 
fluently in the originals. He spends a portion of his 
nights thus ; observe that he has selected the short, 
troublesome articles, because no one would take them, 
and to do them somebody was required. The end 
being the first consideration, he supplied a willing man 
himself. Besides that, he has found time for acquiring 
and well understanding German, French, music, for 



72 KOTFS ON ENGLAND. 

educating himself in every way, for being abreast of 
everything. He avows that work is a necessity to 
him, that once having been two days in entire idleness, 
he almost expired from weariness ; that he likes to 
travel, because every day one gets stuffed with facts, 
with new ideas ; he maintains that need of work to 
be the English resource ; the machine would grind 
itself away if it turned in a vacuum. The grandfather 
of his pleasing young wife, well trained and in- 
structed, was the carpenter of a college. Her father, 
the carpenter's son, entered the college by favour, 
distinguished himself as a student, took honours, left it 
a tutor ; having taken noblemen to board with him, he 
obtained through their influence a cure worth £500 ; 
moreover, he was a good preacher, his sermons sold 
largely. Aided by his reputation, he came to London, 
founded a chapel with the help of some rich people, 
and ended by making £1,200 a year. Twice married 
— the first time to a woman possessing nothing, the 
second to one well off — he has had fourteen children 
by the former and six by the latter ; his sons are 
professors, lawyers, clergymen — nearly all in good 
circumstances ; among the daughters, several have 
remained at home, others have gone out as gover- 
nesses, among others Mrs. W , in order " to 

be independent.'' This last phrase is thoroughly cha- 
racteristic, and, in my opinion, admirable. W , 

his wife, and three children, live comfortably. They 
rent a cottage in the environs of London for £200 
a year. Every year they take a trip together. 
It is evident to me that they expend everything ; 
if they provide for the future, it is at most by means 
of a life assurance. A very good specimen of Eng- 
lish life ; to be thrown early upon one's resources, 



ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN 73 

marry a woman without fortune, have plenty of chil- 
dren, expend one's income, save up nothing, work pro- 
digiously, put one's children to the necessity of working 
also, lay in continuously stores of facts and positive 
information, find distraction from one labour in another 
labour, recruit oneself by travel, always producing and 
always acquiring ; they desire nothing better, either 
for themselves or for their children. 

Such a disposition of heart and mind is explicable 
by many concurrent causes ; the following are those 
which I partially discern : — The law of primogeniture, 
and the large number of children ; as a consequence, 
each one is bound to help himself, and acquires, when 
quite young, the idea that he must be the architect of 
his fortune. But in order to furnish an explanation of 
the large number of children, it must be admitted, 
among other causes, that the parents possess more 
courage, and, above all, more insensibility than among 
us ; more courage, because they fear less the em- 
barrassment of a numerous family, and the obligation 
of working in their old age ; more insensibility, because 
they accept beforehand the idea that their children must 
struggle and toil, that their daughters will quit them 
for ever, going to settle in India, in Australia. On the 
contrary, the first desire of a French father is to spare 
his son the privations which he has undergone himself; 
he stints himself to dower his daughters, and cannot bear 
the thought of having half-a-dozen who will be gover- 
nesses, or of whom he will rid himself by exportation. 

Second cause, the climate ; I always recur to this, 
because there is no greater power. Consider that this 
humidity and this fog existed, and even worse, under 
the Saxon kings, and that this race has lived amid, as 
far as can be traced, even in its earliest country on the 



74 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

coasts of tlie Elbe and of Jutland. At Manchester, 
last winter, one of my friends informed me that in the 
principal hotel of that city it was necessary to keep 
the gas burning for five days ; at midday it was not 
clear enough to see to write ; the sixth day the fog 
still lasted, but the supply of gas was exhausted. 
During six months, and during several days in the 
other months, this country seems to have been made 
for wild ducks. After having seen London, the country 
houses, all the luxury and all the comfort, I said to an 
Englishman^ — " The drawing-room and the dining- 
room are perfect ; I have yet to see the kitchen — the 
manufactories, Manchester, Birmingham, and Liverpool. 
How do your working men live down there? They 
labour ; what else can one do in these streets and in 
that fog ? '' The dismalness and severity of Nature cut 
off clean and by the root every voluptuous conception 
of life. The ideal, under this sky, is a dry, clean, well- 
closed, well- warmed habitation; a chat with a faithful 
wife, a good housekeeper, dressed with care ; rosy- 
cheeked children well washed and in clean clothes ; 
abundance of furniture, commodities, useful and pleasing 
knick-knacks nicely ranged and polished, the presence 
of them recalling to man that he is sheltered against 
inclemencies of weather and weariness, that provision 
has been made for all the possible wants of his body 
and of his mind. On the contrary, in Provence, in 
Italy, in southern countries, the ideal is lounging in 
the shade, on a terrace, in the open air, with a mistress, 
before a noble landscape, amid the perfume of roses, 
amid statues and the music of instruments. In order 
to relish delicately the beauty of the light, the balmy 
air, the delicious fruits, and the configuration of the 
landscape, the senses have but to expand themselves ; 



ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN, 75 

liere the climate closes tliem, and, by dint of repressing, 
blunts them. Take an example in little : a poor person 
at Marseilles, or at Milan, buj^s a pound of grapes for a 
halfpenny, worthy of being placed on the table of gods, 
pnd thus he acquires the idea of exquisite sensation. 
How can you suppose that a like idea can be engendered 
in the brain of one whose palate knows nothing beyond 
a morsel of meat and a glass of gin or of ale ? Shut 
out from this path, the man never dreams of fine and 
sensual enjoyment ; he would not understand how to 
essay it, he is hardened, stifiened, habituated to the exi- 
gencies and hardship of his lot. However, his thoughts 
are turned elsewhere, and this is an obvious necessity, 
fur he would not have time to dawdle, to taste, and to 
enjoy if he desired it. Cold, rain, mud, bad weather, a 
barren soil are the foes he is bound to combat without 
ceasing ; in addition, his frame consumes more, and 
needs more powerful restoratives ; it could not subsist 
without spirits and heavy food. A poor person is not 
wretched in the South ; he obtains the most beautiful 
and the best things gratis, the necessaries of life for 
next to nothing, so many things which are necessaries 
in the North, he does not need : abundance of nourish- 
ment, artificial light, fire, a well-protected dwelling, 
warm clothing, frequent changes of linen, and much 
more. Here he is a painful sight. Nothing can be 
more horrible than the coat, the lodging, the shirt, the 
form of an English beggar ; in Hyde Park, on Sunday, 
when a poor family sits on the grass it makes a stain. 
Possess £20,000 in the Funds here, or else cut your 
throat : such is the idea which constantly haunts me, 
and the omnibus advertisements suggest it still more in 
informing me that " Mappin's celebrated razors cost 
only one shilling." They are of the same mind, and 



76 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

say, to excuse themselves, that, very commonly, among 
them, poverty debases. It is partly to avoid this 
downfall that the English are so eager in quest of 
wealth. They prize it because, in their eyes, it is the 
accompaniment, the aliment, the condition of morality, 
of education, of all the qualities which make a gentle- 
man. Under the lash of this perpetual whip each one 
advances, pulling his car. Now, custom turns into 
necessity ; even after reaching the end, he continues to 
pull, and, if his own be lacking, he harnesses himself 
to that of his neighbour, of his parish, of his association, 
or of the State. 

Another incentive : he has a longing for rough exer- 
cise ; he has fighting instincts, consequently the desire 
to conquer, and to earn the proud testimony that he 
has performed a difficult task. There are a thousand 
signs of this. I have previously noted the necessity 
for physical movement, the long walks of young girls, 
the general habit of riding ; the moist and cold climate 
impels the play of the muscles ; add the innumerable 
pleasure yachts, the dangerous steeplechases, hunting. 
An ambassador named to me spent the whole summer 
in Scotland when he was young. During six days of 
the week he hunted with a companion in the Highlands, 
slept in the open air, returned home on Saturday 
evening, started off again at four on Monday morning. 
A number of young and grown-up men go every year 
to fish for salmon in Norway, shoot deer in Canada, or 
elephants at the Cape. As for journeys full of dangers 
and hardships, even women brave them, and alone. On 
this head I have fifty instances ; and besides, their 
reputation is well known. Applying this longing for 
action and for struggle to trades and to professions, it 
will produce the requisite energy for supporting their 



ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN 77 

fatigue and yoke, more especially if we take into account 
two circumstances wliich greatly lessen the principal 
weight of modern toil, I mean weariness. The one is 
the phlegmatic temperament which represses the springs 
of ideas, the improvisation, the petty intervening emo- 
tions, and enables the man to work with the regularity 
of a machine. The other is the want of nervous delicacy, 
the acquired insensibility, the being accustomed to dull 
sensations, which suppress in man the desire for keen 
and varied pleasure, and hinder him from rebelling 
against the monotony of his business. I have distinctly 
seen this in France when following, in a calico-printing 
establishment, the proceedings of two English workmen 
among thirty Frenchmen ; long, cold faces, silent, exr 
pressionless, without distraction, without haste, giving 
themselves just the necessary movement, never becoming 
animated or unbending, and working as well during 
the tenth hour as during the first. To sum up, there 
is no other outlet for the faculties save useful action ; 
the tyranny of numerous wants which labour alone can 
satisfy, the natural taste for physical effort and moral 
struggle, no aversion for the monotony of uninteresting 
toil ; in all that there is stuff for forming, in every 
manual or liberal career, powerful and patient workers. 
Owing to a very natural consequence, this character 
has become here the ideal pattern ; for every people 
hallows and places on a pedestal the type which best 
exhibits its own faculties, and best supplies its wants. 
This is why opinion and morality repeat to an English- 
man, " Labour and compete in some useful undertak- 
ing ; if you refuse, you are not a man, and have no 
title to esteem." That is a fresh impetus, which is the 
reverse of those which precede, but which is none the 
less distinct from them, and which is of chief import- 



78 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

ance here. For it is an idea, a mental conviction ; now, 
among the men of this country pure ideas, convictions, 
the deliberate opinions of a reasoning brain, are much 
more dominating and efficacious than elsewhere. 
Nothing is more rare than this supremacy among the 
lively and southern races. In my opinion, a French- 
man argues for the sake of arguing ; it is so agreeable 
to him to string one idea after another ; if the con- 
clusion be new and its import great, his delight is 
extreme ; but he stops there : he has furnished himself 
with a fine spectacle of a lofty kind ; that suffices him. 
On the contrary, for a Teutonic head, especially for an 
English head, the slowly elaborated conclusion is but a 
starting-point ; it becomes a principle, a spring of 
action, one of the powers, often the greatest of the 
powers, governing his conduct. He does not act, like 
the other, by impulse, on the spur of the moment, 
under the influence of lively passions which reflection 
has left intact, and which boil over spontaneously in 
hot resolves. In his case these impulses retire into 
the background ; it is his idea which occupies the fore- 
most place and determines it. Having admitted that 
a man ought to strive and render himself useful, he 
requires no other motive for striving and rendering 
himself of use. I quoted above the remark of Mr. 

W , relating to the short, wearisome articles 

w^hich he had undertaken in the Dictionary : " It is 
necessary that they should be done." In like manner 
Arthur Young, who, during two years visited in suc- 
cession all the provinces of France on horseback, in the 
interests of agriculture, could scarcely get the French 
to whom he told this to understand him ; in their eyes 
the thing looked well in words; but to leave his family 
and his business, undertake such a long task, of such 



ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN 79 

remote return, of so problematical success, all by him- 
self, without a mission, from personal choice, without 
other determining motive than a wholly abstract, cold 
idea, that appeared strange to them. The same causes, 
as those above-mentioned, explain this power of an 
idea, especially of a moral idea. In the first place, in 
a phlegmatic and hardened nature, the rival powers 
are fewer ; there are fewer spirits, seductions, rashnesses, 
casting themselves across and breaking the uniform 
line of conduct. Besides, the attraction of sensible 
happiness is smaller, less penetrating, and less seduc- 
tive. In fine, when one voluntarily gives oneself a 
watchword, when on reflection it is considered noble, 
when put to the test it is found hard, pride and the 
spirit of struggling cleave to it unto the end. Such 
is the sentiment of duty ; the English say that in all 
degrees it is one of the essential traits of their national 
character. This being settled, let us review the types. 
When at eight o'clock in the morning, at the terminus 
of a railway, one sees people arriving from the country 
for their daily avocations, or when one walks in a 
business street, one is struck with the number of faces 
which exhibit this type of cold and determined will. 
They walk straight, with a geometrical movement, 
without looking on either hand ; without distraction, 
wholly given up to their business, like automatons, 
each moved by a spring ; the large, bony face, the pole 
complexion, often sallow or leaden-hued, the rigid 
look, all, even to their tall, perpendicular, black hat, 
even to the strong and large foot-covering, even to the 
umbrella rolled in its case and carried in a particular 
style, display the man unsensitive, dead to ideas of 
pleasure and elegance, solely preoccupied in getting 
through much business well and rapidly. Sometimes 



8o NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

one detects the physiognomy of Pitt — tlie slight face, 
impassive and imperious, the pale and ardent eyes, the 
look which shines like the fixed gleam of a sword ; the 
man is then of finer mould, yet his will is only the more 
incisive and the stouter ; it is iron transformed into 
steel. The efiect is at its height when this expression 
is perceived on the countenance of a young girl ; I 
have seen it several times, and the accent, the words, 
and the thought were in unison ; at the end of two 
minutes the cutting of the knife was felt. Probably 
these are the sort of women who, as if taking a walk, 
go alone from Alexandria to Khartoum, or, out of 
philanthropy, conduct bands of women from London 
to Australia. 

I transcribe a note written at the close of a previous 
journey, and confirmed by what I have seen during the 
present one : *' If we except the beaux and belles of 
the public walks, four times out of five the English 
type is the following : as regards women, a capacity 
for enduring much, and frequently the physiognomy 
of a person who has borne much, yet with resigned, 
worn, or determined air, which excites the remark, 
* She has made up her mind ; ' as regards men, a capa- 
city for doing much, for long- sustained effort, the 
imprint of sustained attention, contracted traits, not at 
all enervated or visionary, the jaw clenched, the face 
impassive, steadfast." The excess of this faculty and 
kind of life is exhibited on all hands, and notably 
among the poorer classes. A number of faces among 
the workmen, the day labourers of the country, are 
hollowed, blanched, spent with fatigue, and recall the 
screws in the cabs, which stand patiently and inert, 
the four feet apart, while the rain pours over their old 
lean flanks. Greyish and straight hair, in scanty 



ENGLISH MEX AXD WOMEX, 8i 

locks ; the moath remains half open, as if due to an 
involuntary relaxation of the muscles ; the eye has no 
longer any meaning. The man moves still, but this 
seems as if owing to the effect of an imparted 
movement ; he has become a machine. 'Wlien a trace 
of expression returns, he seems to awake out of a bad 
dream. The consumption, the wear and tear of life, 
the exhaustion of the being harnessed to a load too 
heavy, jaded, flurried, is still more visible in the 
women. Sometimes, during a visit made to them, 
upon a question being put, their lips endeavour to 
recall a smile ; but one turns away with a heavy heart 
when one has seen this attempt to smile. 

The strong, the phlegmatic, the worker ; around 
these three types group several varieties, according to 
the differences of class, of education, of employment, of 
sex, of age, these again being complicated by the dif- 
ferent degrees of purity and force, which each type 
may present. But all this is a sketch only ; it must 
now be verified, corrected, investigated — always in 
contact with living things. 



82 



VI. 

ejnglish girls and authoresses. 

NUMBERS of dinners or luncKeons in town, walks 
in tlie country, with persons belonging to the 
upper middle class, and with some of the nobility. The 
drawing-rooms and the dinners are the same as every- 
where else ; there is a certain level of luxury and of 
elegance where all the wealthy classes of Europe meet. 
The only very striking thing at table, or in the even- 
ing, is the exceeding freshness of the ladies and also of 
their toilette ; the hue of the skin is dazzling. Yester- 
day, I was placed beside a young lady whose neck and 
shoulders resembled snow, or rather mother-of-pearl; 
this extraordinary white is so powerful, that, to my 
eyes, it is not life-like. She wore a rose-coloured dress, 
wreath of red flowers, green trimmings, and a golden 
necklace around the throat, like a savage queen : they 
have rarely a feeling for colours. 

Great reception at a minister's ; the staircase is 
monumental, and the drawing-rooms are loftj^ princely; 
but this is uncommon ; in general the house is not well 
arranged for receiving guests. When one has a large 
company, the two drawing-rooms on the first-floor do 
not sufiice ; very rich people w^ho are obliged to make 
a display, give their entertainment on two floors ; the 



ENGLISH GIRLS AND AUTHORESSES. 83 

ladies, for lack of room in order to get air, seat them- 
selves on the steps of the stairs. To-day several dis 
tinguished persons were pointed out to me, but I have 
not the right to describe them. Some young ladies 
and young girls are extremely beautiful, and all the 
company are excessively dressed ; many ladies have 
their hair decked with diamonds, and their shoulders, 
much exposed, have the incomparable whiteness of 
which I have just spoken, the petals of a lily, the gloss 
of satin do not come near to it. But there are many 
storks in gauze and tulle, many skinny jades, with 
prominent noses, jaws of macaws ; ugliness is more 
ugly here than among us. As to the men, their 
physical type and their expression badly harmonize 
with their position ; they are often too tall, too strong, 
too automatic, with eyes inert or wild, with angular 
and knotty features. I met again the two Frenchmen 
belonging to the Embassy ; how agreeable as a con- 
trast are their intelligent and lively, gay faces ! It is 
sufficient to be introduced in order to be greeted with 
perfect politeness. The French wrongly think that 
they are privileged in this matter. In this respect, 
throughout Europe, all well brought up people re- 
g? ^ble each other. 

Another evening at Lady S . One of her 

daughters sang a Norwegian song at the piano, and 
sang it well, with animation and expression which are 
not common. According to the opinions of my musical 
friends, the English are still worse endowed than we 
are with respect to music ; however, on this subject, 

all illusions are possible ; Miss B , having pitilessly 

strummed a sonata, finished amidst general attention ; 
her mother said to me, '' She has quite a genius for 
it." Two other young girls are beautiful aud pleaa- 



84 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

ing ; but too rosy, and upon this rosiness are too many 
adornments of staring green which vex the eye. But 
as compensation, how simple and affable are the}^ ! 
Twice out of three times when one converses here with 
a woman, one feels rested, affected, almost happy ; their 
greeting is kindly, friendly ; and such a smile of gentle 
and quiet goodness ! No after- thought ; the intention, 
the expression, everything is open, natural, cordial. 
One is much more at ease than with a Frenchwoman ; 
one has not the vague fear of being judged, rallied; 
one does not feel oneself in presence of a sharpened, 
piercing, cutting mind, that can quarter you in a trice ; 
nor a vivid, exacting, wearied imagination which de- 
mands anecdotes, spice, show, amusement, flattery, all 
kinds of dainties, and shuts you up if you have no 
tit-bits to offer her. The conversation is neither a 
duel, nor a competition ; one may express a thought as 
it is without embellishment ; one has the right to be 
what one is, commonplace. One may even, without 
wearying her or having a pedantic air, speak to her 
about serious matters, obtain from her correct infor- 
mation, reason with her as with a man. I transcribe 
some conversation taken down on the spot. 

Dined with Mrs. T ; her two nieces are at table. 

They have the small, plain dresses of boarding-school 
girls. The eldest never raises her eyes during the 
repast, or timidly glances around. This is not silli- 
ness ; after dinner I talked freely for an hour with 
them. Their silence is mere bashfulness, infantine 
modesty, innocent wildness of the startled doe. When 
spoken to, their blood ascends to their cheeks ; for 
myself, I love that youthfulness of the mind ; it is not 
necessary that a young girl should too early have the 
assurance and the manners of society ; the French 



ENGLISH GIRLS AND AUTHORESSES. 85 

girl is a flower too soon in bloom. They spend the 
winter and the summer in the country, twenty miles 
distant from the city. They talk for at least two 
hours daily ; then they work in the family circle, 
where they listen to something read aloud. Their 
occupations are drawing, music, visits to the poor 
reading (they are subscribers to a circulating library). 
They read novels, travels, history, and some sermons. 
On Sunday there is church, and the school for the 
poor village children. Thej- do not weary; they have 
no desire to see company. This winter they came 
to France, and found Frenchwomen very agreeable, 
amiable, engaging, and sprightly. But they are sur- 
prised and hurt at the constant supervision which we 
keep over our girls. In England they are much more 
independent. Even in London, each of them may go out 
alone, or at least with her sister. Yet there is excess ; 
they censure the fast girls who follow the hounds, treat 
men as comrades, and sometimes smoke. All is com- 
monplace in these two young girls, education, mind, 
character, face ; they are very healthy, they are fresh, 
nothing more ; they are average girls. But this 
modesty, this simplicit}^, this health, this good sense, 
sufiice to make a good wife who will be contented with 
her household, will have children without being sickly, 
will be faithful to her husband, and will not ruin him 
in dress. 

The chief point is the absence of coquetry ; I pro- 

Iceed to cite trfling instances, extreme, unfavourable. 
This winter in a Paris drawing-room where I was, a 
stout, red -faced, bald man, related to a rather great 
English personage, entered leading his daughter of 
sixteen ; pretty gentle face, but what ignorance of 
\ 



86 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

glossy, a sort of badly fitting wKite casaque, and her 
waist resembled a log in a sack. All the evening sLe 
remained silent, like a Cinderella amidst tbe splendours 
and supreme elegances of the dresses and beauties 
surrounding her. Here, in St. James's Park, at the 
Exhibition, in the picture galleries, many young ladies, 
pretty, well dressed, wore spectacles. I put aside 
several other traits; but it is clear to me that they 
possess in a much lesser degree than Frenchwomen the 
sentiment which ordains that at every moment, and 
before every person, a woman stands with shouldered 
arms, and feels ' herself on parade. However, natural- 
ness is less restrained, and breaks forth more freel}^ 
Recently, at thirty miles from London, we took a long 
walk with the daughters of the family, and we climbed 
a rather steep height. Still very young, they are true 
goats, always leaping, even when ascending, upon the 
sharp slopes and among the stones. Exuberance and 
freedom of the circulation, and of the animal forces ; 
nothing feminine ; in the carriage, before arriving, 
their noisy babble, excitedness, their sparkling eyes, 
above all their energy, the emphasis of their pronun- 
ciation, gave the idea of merry English boys during 
the holidays. The youngest had bright crimson cheeks 
like a rosy apple ; both of them had full jaws and large 
feet. Miss Charlotte, aged fifteen, told me that she 
could easily walk twenty miles. They first learned 
German from a nurse ; but they do not know French 
yet. " Yet you have a French governess ?" " Yes, but 
when one is stupid ! '' Then an outburst of laughter. 
Certainly, self- love does not constrain them ; thej'' 
never dream of acting a part ; tall and developed as 
we see them, daughters of a nobleman who is wealthy, 
they are children still ; not one of their ideas, not one of 



ENGLISH GIRLS AND AUTHUKESSFS. 87 

tlieir gestures, betrays tlie woman, l^eitlier precocious 
nor worldly ; these two traits coincide and engender a 
multitude of others. I can bear the testimony of my 
eyes to the great freedom which they enjoy; I see 
many of them in the morning in Hyde Park who have 
come to take a turn on horseback, without other com- 
panion than a groom. Two days after arriving in the 
country I was asked to give my arm to a young 
daughter of the family, in order to escort her to a 

place a mile off. S , who has spent a year here, 

considers this loyal and free intercourse charming ; a 
gentleman to whom he was introduced said, " Come to 
my house and I will make you acquainted with my 
daughters.'* They are more amiable and honest com- 
rades. One rides with them on horseback, one accom- 
panies them to archery meetings, one chats familiarly 
with them on all, or nearly all, subjects ; one laughs 
without afterthought ; it would be impossible even for a 
coxcomb to treat them otherwise than as if they were 
his sisters. At Manchester two of my French friends 
went to dine at a house. At eleven in the evening 
they were requested to escort home two young girls 
who were there. All the four entered a cab, and rode 
for half-an-hour. They chatted gaily, and without 
any trouble or embarrassment on either side. Thanks 
to these manners, the man most inured to the harsh- 
nesses and villanies of life, must keep a corner of *his 
soul for poetry, for tender sentiments. In this we are 
deficient ; an Englishman who has travelled among 
us is astonished and scandalised to see men in Paris 
staring women in the face, not yielding the pavement 
to them. It is necessary to have lived among foreigners 
to know how much our manners, our remarks on this 
subject are displeasing, and even ofiensive ; they con- 



88 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

sider us bag- men, fops, and blackguards. The truth is 
that we feel with difficulty the sentiment of respect ; sex, 
condition, education, do not create as great distinctions 
among us as among other nations. Moreover, in addi- 
tion to individuals being more equal among us, thej 
experience the necessity in a higher degree of being 
sensible of this equality. 

Dined with F . The ladies explained to me the 

training of young girls. In well-to-do or wealthy 
families they all learn French, German, Italian, in 
general from infancy, through nurses and foreign 
governesses. Commonly they begin with French ; 
nearly all speak it fluently, and several without any 
accent ; I have cited the sole exception I have encoun- 
tered. They read Dante, Manzoni, Schiller, and Goethe, 
our classics, Chateaubriand, and some moderns. Many 
learn a little Latin ; that will be serviceable for the 
education of their children, or of their young brothers. 
Several learn natural history, botany, mineralogy, 
geology ; they have a taste for all natural things ; and 
in the country, at the sea- side, in their frequent jour- 
neys, they can see minerals, herbs, shells, form collec- 
tions. Besides, that suits the English habit, which 
consists in storing up facts ; thus they are more 
instructed, and more solidly instructed, than among us. 
Another motive is that many of the young girls never 
marry, and that it is requisite to prepare an occupation 

for them beforehand. Lady M cited the case of 

a family in her neighbourhood, where there are five 
unmarried daughters, all beautiful ; the older ones are 
thirty-five and thirty-six ; this is because they have 
been brought up in luxury, and have scarcely any 
dowry. Frequently a father only gives his daughter a 
sum equivalent to the income of his eldest son and 



ENGLISH GIRLS AND AUTHORESSES. 89 

heir; and, moreover, lie obliges the gentleman who 
offers himself, to make a settlement on his daughter of 
£200, £300, £400 sterling yearty, whereof she will 
have the entire control when married, and which wdll 
be her pin-money. This condition keeps away many 
suitors; besides, it is granted that one must marry 
for love, settled liking ; now, it often happens that one 
does not feel this liking, or that one does not inspire 
it. Hence many girls miss the chance, and remain 
spinsters. There are some in almost every family, the 
position of aunt being very well filled. They help to 
rear the children, superintend a part of the household, 
preserve-making or the linen cupboard, make herba- 
riums, paint in water-colours, read, write, become 
learned. Many compose moral romances, and some- 
times very good novels ; Miss Yonge, Miss Kavanagh, 
Miss Bronte, the author of " John Halifax," Miss 
Thackeray, and others, are known ; talent is frequent 
among authoresses, there are some of the first class — 
Mrs. Gaskell, Miss Evans, Elizabeth Browning ; the 
two last possess genius. Reckon again the trans- 
lations : numerous German and French works have 
been translated — and well translated — by women. 
Others write in magazines, compose small popular 
treatises, join a society, teach classes of poor children. 
The constant concern is to find an employment for 
their faculties, or to acquire a talent which serves as a 
remedy for weariness. The highest rank is not absolved. 
Witness the occupations of the Royal Family : the 
Queen and her daughters send water-colours, engrav- 
ings, drawings done by themselves, to charity sales ; 
Prince Albert was one of the most cultivated and most 
active men in the kingdom ; each one thus takes up 
one or two special subjects, labours at some improve- 



90 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

ment in agriculture, in science— some beneficent work 
or institution. 

Thus life is serious, and all, even young girls, 
know that they must prepare themselves and provide 

themselves for it. N , who comes to England 

every year, visited one of his old friends, wealthy, and 
the father of a family, who said to him — *' I am put 
oat ; my daughter Jane is twenty-four, does not marr}^ 
frequently shuts herself up in the library, and reads 
solid works." *' What dower will you give her ? ." 
" Two thousand pounds sterling." " And your sons ?" 
" The eldest will have the estate ; the second a mine 
which yields two thousand pounds." ^' Give five thou- 
sand pounds to Miss Jane." This phrase opened up- 
vistas to the father; he gave her the five thousand 
pounds. Miss Jane has been married, she has a baby ; 
she was made to be a mother ; it would have been a 
pity to have converted her into a learned, spectacled 
spinster ; if suitors do not ofier themselves it is because 
the style of the house is too great. As for me, what I 
admire here is the coolness, the good sense, the courage 
of the young girl who, seeing herself in a blind alley, 
alters her course without a murmur, and silently sets 
herself to study. In none of the houses which I have 
entered in London or in the country have I seen a 
journal of the fashions. One of my English friends 
who has sojourned in France informs me that here no 
well brought up woman reads such platitudes. On the 
contrar}^, a special review, '' The English Women's 
Review," contains in the number of which I am turn- 
ing over the pages, statements and letters on emigra- 
tion to Australia, articles on public instruction in 
France, and other essays equally important; no novels, 
neither chit-chat about theatres, nor review of fashions, 



ENGLISH GIRLS AND AUTHORESSES. 91 

&c. The whole is serious — substantial ; witness as a 
contrast in a provincial mansion among us the journals 
of fashions with illuminated sketches, patterns of the 
last style of bonnets, explanations of a piece of em- 
broidery, little sentimental stories, honeyed compliments 
to female readers, and, above all, the correspondence of 
the directress with her subscribers on the last page, 
a masterpiece of absurdity and inanity. It is shameful 
that a human intellect can digest such aliment. A 
dress badly made is more bearable than an empty 
head. I copy the titles of some articles, all written by 
women in the Transactions of the National Association 
for the Promotion of Social Science. "Education by 
Means of Workhouses," by Louisa Twining ; *' District 
Schools for the English Poor," by Barbara Collett ; 
" Application of the Principles of Education to Lower- 
class Schools," by Mary Carpenter ; *' Actual State of 
the Colony of Mettray," by Florence Hill ; " Hospital 
Statistics," by Florence Nightingale ; *' The Condition 
of Working Women in England and France," by 
Bessie Parkes ; " Slavery in America, and its Influence 
upon Great Britain," by Sarah Redmond ; " Improve- 
ment of Nurses in Agricultural Districts," by Mrs. 
Wiggins ; " Report of the Society for Furnishing 
Employment to Women," by Jane Crowe. Most of 
these authoresses are not married, several are secretaries 
of active associations, of which the Review I have just 
cited is the central organ; one of these associations 
[Supplies women with work, another visits the work- 
jhouses, another the sick. All these articles are instruc- 
tive and useful, the custom of keeping classes, of 
^visiting the poor, of conversing with men, discussion, 
jfitudy, personal observation of facts, have yielded their 
[fruits ; they know how to observe and reason ; they go 



92 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

to the bottom of things, and they comprehend the true 
principle of all improvement. Mary Carpenter says, 
"It is necessary above all, and as the first aim, to 
develop and direct the infant's will, enrol him as the 
principal soldier, as the most serviceable of all the 
co-operators in the education which is given to him/* 
One cannot be corrected, improved but by oneself, 
instinctive personal effort, self-government are indis- 
pensable; the moral rule must not be applied from 
without, but spring up from within. Whoever has 
perused English novels knows with what precision and 
what justice these authoresses depict characters ; fre- 
quently a person who has lived in the country, in a 
small set, busied with domestic cares, finds herself 
obliged to write a novel in order to gain her bread, 
and one discovers that she understands the human 
heart better than a professional psychologist. To be 
instructed, learned, useful, acquire convictions, impart 
them to others, employ powers and employ them well, 
that is something ; one may laugh if one likes, say that 
these manners form schoolmistresses, female pedants, 
blue- stockings, and not women. As you please ; but 
contrast this with our empty provincial idleness, the 
weariness of our ladies, the life of an old maid who 
rears canaries, hawks scandal, does crotchet- work, and 
attends every service. This is the more important 
because in England all are not female pedants. I 
know four or five ladies or young girls who write ; 
they continue none the less pleasing and natural. 
Most of the authoresses whom I have cited are, on the 
authority of my friends, domestic ladies of very simple 
habits. I have named two among them who possess 
gcniuE ; a great French artist whose name I could 
mention, and who has spent several days with each of 



ENGLISH GIRLS AND AUTHORESSES. 95 

them, did not know that they had talent ; not once did a 
hint of authorship, the need of speaking of oneself and 
of one's books, occur during twenty- four hours of talk. 

M , being invited to the country, discovered that 

the mistress of the house knew much more Greek than 
himself, apologised, and retired from the field ; then, 
out of pleasantry, she wrote down his English sentence 
in Greek. Note that this female Hellenist is a woman 
of the world, and even stylish. Moreover, she has 
nine daughters, two nurses, two governesses, servants 
in proportion, a large, well-appointed house, frequent 
and numerous visitors ; throughout all this, perfect 
order ; never noise or fuss ; the machine appears to 
move of its own accord. These are gatherings of faculties 
and of contrasts which might make us reflect. In 
France we believe too readily that if a woman ceases to 
be a doll she ceases to be a woman. 



I 



94 



yii. 



ENGLISH MARRIAGES AND MARRIED WOMEN. 

ACONYERSATION with several Englishmen about 
marriage ; they have lived abroad, and I think 
them impartial ; besides, their statements agree. A 
young English girl will not marry unless through 
inclination ; she weaves a romance for herself, and 
this dream forms part; of her pride, of her chastity ; 
thiKs many, and of exalted character, think they have 
fallen short should they marry without experiencing 
the enthusiasm suited to an absolute preference. To 
marry is to abandon oneself wholly and for ever. 
Witness, with regard to this deep sentiment, the 
novels by ladies — above all, *' John Halifax, Gentle- 
man,'' and others by the same authoress. These are 
the theories of a pure, exclusive mind, which seems to 
have traversed the whole world without receiving, I 
will not say a stain, but the shadow of one. 

In this romance of the heart, the young girl con- 
tinues English, that is to say, positive and practical. 
She does not dream of outpourings, of sentimental 
walks, hand-in-hand in the moonlight, but of her 
share in an undertaking. She wishes to be the helper, 
the useful partner of her husband in his long journeys, 
in his difficult enterprises, in all his affairs whether 



MARRIAGES AND MARRIED WOMEN. 95 

wearying or dangerous. Such, for example, were Mrs. 
Livingstone and Lady Baker ; the one traversed Africa 
from side to side ; the other went to the sources of the 
Nile, and narrowly escaped dying in consequence. I 
have seen an English Bishop of a large island, a 
countr}^ of heasts and cannibals ; his poor wife carried 
on her countenance the marks of that terrible climate. 
A young girl of the neighbourhood, rich and of good 
family, is at this moment making her preparations, 
packing up her piano, &c. ; the gentleman she is 
about to marry will take her to Australia ; she will 
return once only in five or six years to kiss her old 
parents. Another young lady of twenty-four, very 
weak and delicate ; her husband is in the Punjaub 
(£6,000 of salary, £1,200 for the expenses of his 
establishment) ; she has been for two years in Europe 
with an affection of the throat, which will return as 
soon as she returns to India ; four young children ; 
they are sent to Europe before they are two years old ; 
the Indian climate kills them ; there are here entire 
boarding schools here recruited by these little Anglo- 
Indians. Yery often a lady, daughter of a marquis or 
baronet, having a dowry of £3,000 or £3,250, marries 
a simple gentleman, and descends of her own free will 
from a state of fortune, of comfort, of society, into a 
lower or much inferior grade. She accustoms herself 
to this. The reverse of the medal is the fishery for 
husbands. Worldly and vulgar characters do not fail 
in this respect ; certain young girls use and abuse 
their freedom in order to settle themselves well. A 
young man, rich and noble, is much run after. Being 
too well received, flattered, tempted, provoked, he 
becomes suspicious and remains on his guard. This is 
not the case in France ; the young girls are too clocely 



96 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

watched to make the first advance ; there the game 
never becomes the sportsman. Commonly, the dowries 
are very small. I have been told of several families 
in which the eldest son has one or two hundred thou- 
sand pounds sterling ; the daughters receive from 
three to five thousand. However, in order to marry, 
it is necessary that they should feel a passion. Many 
do not marry in consequence of a thwarted inclination, 
and continue to live with their eldest brother. Every 
Englishman has a bit of romance in his heart with 
regard to marriage ; he pictures a home with the wife 
of his choice, domestic talk, children ; there his little 
universe is enclosed, all his own ; so long as he 
does not have it he is dissatisfied, being in this matter 
the reverse of a Frenchman, to whom marriage is 
generally an end, a makeshift. Frequently he is 
obliged to wait, especially if a younger son, because 
he has not sufficient as yet wherewith to maintain his 
wife. He goes to India, to Australia, labours with 
all his might, returns, and marries ; here the passions 
are tenacious and deep. When an Englishman is in 
love, one of my entertainers said to me, he is capable 
of anything. Thackeray has very well marked the 
intensity and the persistence of this sentiment in his 
portrait of Major Dobbin, the lover of Amelia, in 
" Yanity Fair ;'' he waits fifteen years without hope, 
because for him there is but one woman in the world. 
This causes silent rendings of the heart and long inner 
tragedies. Numbers of young men experience it ; 
and the protracted chastity, the habits of taciturn con- 
centration, a capacity for emotion greater and less 
scattered than among us, carries their passions to the 
extreme. Frequently it ends in nothing, because 
they are not beloved, or because the dispari'^-- of rank is 



MARRIAGES AND MARRIED WOMEN. 97 

too great, or because they have not money enough where- 
with to maintain a family — a very costly thing here. 
Then they become half insane ; travel to distract their 
minds, proceed to the ends of the earth. One who 
was mentioned to me, very distinguished, was sup- 
planted by a titled rival ; during two years apprehen- 
sions were felt for his reason. He went to China and 
to Australia ; at present he occupies a high post, he 
has been made a baronet, he presides over important 
business, but he is unmarried ; from time to time he 
steals off, makes a journey on foot, in order to be alone 
and not to have any one to converse with. 

I have previously noted that young people see and 
associate together in perfect freedom, without being 
watched, they can thus study and understand each 
other as much as they please ; for four months, for 
five months and more, they ride on horseback and 
chat together during several successive seasons in \k\Q 
country. When the young man has made up his 
mind it is to the young girl that he addresses himself 
first, asking the consent of the parents in the second 
place ; this is the opposite of the French custom, 
where the man would consider it indelicate to utter a 
single clear or vague phrase to the young girl before 
having spoken to her parents. In this matter the 
English find fault with us, ridicule our marriages sum- 
marily settled before a lawyer. Yet , who is 

English, and knows France well, allows that their 
love-matches end more than once in discord, and our 
marriages of arrangement in concord. The wife's 
dowry is nearly always placed in the hands of trustees, 
who take charge of it on their own responsibility, 
handing over the interest only to the family; in 
general this income is the wife's pin-money : with i< 

H 



98 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

slie must dress herself and dress her children. The 
fortune becomes thus a kind of dotal or paraphernalia 
fund, secured against the accidents which may happen 
to the husband. This precaution is taken, because, 
according to law, all the wife's property is engulfed 
in that of the husband ; without this clause, she w^ould 
enter the married state deprived of all share in the 
common fund ; she can hold nothing in her own right ; 
she is a simple infant in presence of her husband. 
Such is one of the reasons indacing Mr. J. Stuart 
Mill to protest so vigorously against t*he subjection of 
women. In fact they are kept in subjection here by 
the law, religion, manners, and much more closely so 
than among us. The husband is their lord, and yerj 
often he accepts the title seriously ; as the wife brings 
but little money into the establishment, and as her 
small share remains apart, h@ thinks himself autho- 
rised to say nothing to her about his concerns. Some- 
times she is unacquainted with what he does, how he 
makes the money which he acquires ; he gives so much 
monthly for the household expenses, and renders no 
account of the rest. Whether he speculates, builds, 
sells, or buys, is none of her business : frequently ruin 
arrives without her being able to foresee it. She is 
merely a housekeeper ; she must not busy herself 
about anything save her household and her children. 
Most frequently she contents herself with that part ; 
owing to her eonscience and education she is gentle 
and submissive. ^Nevertheless, on the avowal of my 
friends, this inequality has grave inconveniences ; the 
husband is often a despot, and, should he die, the wife, 
kept all her life in ignorance and dependence, is not 
capable, as with us, of clearing up the affairs, of govern- 
ing the children, of replacing the head of the family. 



MARRIAGES AND MARRIED WOMEN. 99 

Marriage is encompassed witli profound respect, and 
as regards this matter, opinion is unbending; it is quite 
sufficient to read books, newspapers, especially the 
writings in which anonymous authors indulge in the 
greatest license, for example, romances, comic journals ; 
adultery is never excused ; even in the latitude of inti- 
mate conversations between man and man, it is ahva3^s 
held up as a crime. Breaches occur, of which I 
shall speak later, among the class of tradesmen ; and in 
the lower order of the nobility which is fashionable, 
travels, and copies Continental manners. But, in the 
mass of the nation, among well brought up persons in 
the great world, the wives are almost always faithful. 

C tells me that I might remain here for eighteen 

months, and visit all the drawing-rooms, without meet- 
ing an exception, one only is cited among the highest 
class. Moi'e such cases occurred fifty years ago, in the 
time of Byron and Alfieri; since then, opinion has 
become severe, and the Queen has laboured with all 
her might in this direction, firstly, by her example, 
secondly by her influence ; she excludes ladies of doubt- 
ful reputation from her Court ; the extreme urgency and 
pressure of affairs were needed during the Crimean 
war for her to tolerate under the same roof with her, at 
Windsor, a statesman known as a profligate. Anotlier 
guaranty is the dread of publicity and of the news- 
papers. On this head our free and rakish manners 

grievously offend them. C related to me that in 

a Parisian circle he heard a man of the world observe 
to another — '* Is it true, then, that your wife has got 
a lover ? '* This remark he considers monstrous, and 
he is right. A book like Balzac's '' Physiologie du 
Mariage" would give great offence; perhaps the author 
M^ould be prosecuted by the Society for the Suppression 



100 



NOTES ON ENGLAND. 



of Yice, and probably it would not have been accepted by 
any publisber. As regards our ordinrry novels, a liberal 
review, the National, could not find a strong enough 
expression v/herewith to designate them — '^ nameless 
ignominy, the morality of stockjobbers and lorettes." 
They forget three things. In the first place, these 
irregularities are not habitual among us, excepting in 
the case of fashionable upstarts ; they very rarely reach 
the rich or well-to-do middle-class which possesses 
family traditions. Besides, in the provinces, life goes 
on openly, and scandal-mongering, which is greatly 
feared, performs the part of the police. Finally, the 
Frenchman flaunts that which a foreigner conceals ; he 
has a horror of hypocrisy, and he prefers to be a 
braggart of vice. According to my friends, the good 
conduct of English ladies is explainable by the follow- 
ing causes : 1. They are more habituated to take care 
of themselves, having been free from their infancy. 
2. They are less accessible to illusion, to enthusiastic 
dreams, because they have mixed with young men, and 
had some experience of the world. 3. They have habits 
of reflection, and a fund of good sense, because they 
have received a more serious education, having learned 
several languages, gained a smattering of science, 
travelled nearly always in England, and often abroad, 
and heard their father discuss politics and grave sub- 
jects with his friends. BesideSj Protestantism develops 
habits of reflection and reasoning. Lastly, the novels 
are always moral ; and in contact with the poor, m 
charitable societies, they have gathered some know- 
ledge of real life. 4. They live for eight or nine 
months of the year in the countr}'", and are there 
sheltered against temptation. 5. They have many 
children, who occupy tl eir time; a full nursery, with 



MARRIAGES AND MARRIED WOMEN, loi 

its train of nurses and governesses, requires continual 
supervision. 6. They give themselves all manner of 
occupations in addition. Sunday schools, country sew- 
ing classes, visits to the poor, botany, mineralogy, 
collections of plants and of butterflies, reading. Every 
family in easy circumstances, when in the country, 
receives in addition to the Tiwtes^ in addition to other 
jourimls and very solid reviews, numbers of new books 
sent from the circulating library. Mudie's, which is 
the principal one, purchases one hundred and fifty 
thousand volumes yearly ; it took three thousand copies 
of Livingstone's " Travels in Africa ; " two thousand 
five hundred of Macaulay's '* History of England.^' A 
quantity of serious books arrive in this way, and are 
renewed monthly on the library table in country seats. 
Among these books the most common are works of 
political economy, natural history, history, and, above 
all, travels. Each year scores of them are published. 
Next to the pleasure of travelling, the greatest plea- 
sure for an Englishman is to read a volume of travel ; 
in this way he augments his store of facts. The ladies 
have the same taste ; all those with whom I am ac- 
quainted have visited France, Italy, Grermany ; a young 
wife with whom I dined yesterday will pass the winter 
in Rome, the spring in Jerusalem ; those who have 
delicate chests go to Cairo as readily as we go to Nice. 
During the journey they take notes, keep a journal ; 
on their return, some of these are printed, others are 
communicated to their friends in manuscript. They 
thus keep the globe perpetually at their finger ends ; 
and I have seen those who, with a knowledge of tha 
subject, interested themselves in the settlements of 
Australia, the oil springs of Pennsylvania, the revolt 
of the Taepings in China, and the annual massacres of 



102 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

Dahomey. Add lastly, the great amount of physical 
movement and the talents which are cultivated ; there 
are always one or two painters in water-colour in a 
family, and every one rides on horseback once a daij. 
By these occupations the mind is engaged, the time 
is filled, and that closes the door against unhealthy 
ideas. These are the auxiliaries of the moral principle ; 
but the principle itself must also be taken to account. 
In France it is based on the sentiment of honour ; in 
England on the idea of duty. Kow, the former is 
rather arbitrary ; its reach varies in different persons. 
One piques himself upon being rigid on a certain point, 
and thinks himself free on all the rest ; in the circle of 
bad actions, he cuts off a segment from which he ex- 
cludes himself; but this part varies according to his 
preferences — for example, he will be truthful in speak- 
ing, but not in writing, or the reverse. My honour 
consists of that wherein I place my glory, and I can 
place it in this as well as in that. On the contrary, 
the idea of duty is strict, and does not admit of the 
slightest compromise. The Englishwoman knows that 
in marrying she has vowed fidelity, and the remem- 
brance of this remains anchored in her conscience. 
According to my friends, this anchorage is so strong 
that frequently after a slip the wife breaks off altogether; 
all her past flows back upon her like a flood, till she is 
well-nigh choked with shame and sorrow. Besides, 
she has not the elasticity of mind, the manual dexterity, 
necessary for harmoniously conducting an intrigue and 
a household ; ambiguity is repugnant to her decided 
character ; division revolts her ; the obligation to lie 
unceasingly is insupportable to her. She insists upon 
being carried off in order to bring about a divorce. 
I continue to reproduce conversations. I find nothing 



MARRIAGES AND MARRIED WOMEN. 103 

more agreeable tlian an evening spent in this way with, 
one or two sincere, friendly, unprejudiced interlocutors, 
wlio have lived and travelled. National self-love does 
not interfere ; one talks to learn, not to compete or 
shine. One ventures to give the minor characteristic 
fact, the precise and genuine detail ; each supplies, as 
briefly as possible, the cream of his experience, his pro- 
visions made during a lengthened period, his choice 
dishes. The following are those of my friends. My 
mind has never been so fully or so well fed ; I con- 
tinued questioning and listening to them till one 
o'clock in the morning. Generally an English woman 
is more thoroughly beautiful and healthy than a 
Frenchwoman. The principal cause of this is the 
hygiene ; the children ride on horseback, are much in 
the open air, do not dine with their parents, do not eat 
sweetmeats. Moreover, the nerves are less excited, 
and the temperament is calmer, more enduring, less 
exacting ; what is the most wearing in these days, ai-e 
incessant and unsatisfied desires. For example, in the 
Crimea the French wounded recovered less frequently 
than the English, because they resigned themselves 
less rapidly. This is still truer in the cultivated class, 
notably among the wives ; in their case the uneasy or 
ardent brain deadens and dries up the springs of life ; 
in our day, a wife must accept her condition, if she 
wishes to be well. On the other hand, the English- 
woman is less agreeable ; she does not dress for her 
husband, she does not know how to make a pretty 
woman of herself; she has no talent for rendering her- 
self fascinating and enticing at home ; she is unac- 
quainted with a number of fine and delicate graces ; 
she considers it unworthy of her to employ minor 
means for re- awakening love or fondness ; more fre- 



104 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

quently still slie is not clever enougli to invent them. 
She puts on handsome new dresses, is most careful 
about cleanliness, but nothing more; she is not at- 
tractive ; one soon wearies beside her. Fancy a very 
beautiful pink peach, slightly juicy, and alongside of 
it a perfumed strawberry full of flavour. It is the 

same with respect to the other affections. B 

says that they have more charm in France when they 
are sincere and strong. In all things there is a turn, a 
manner, a degree ; among the sentiments these consist 
of forethought, attentions, certain phrases, the tone in 
which they are uttered, the considerations, the care- 
takings which constantly renew and diversify the softer 
emotions. 

According to C , an Englishwoman is incapable 

of presiding in a drawing-room as cleverly as a French 
woman ; I mean a drawing-room like those of Paris in 
which one is amused ; he barely knows two or three 
married ladies of his country who could do it. The 
Englishwoman has not sufficient tact, promptitude, 
suppleness to accommodate herself to persons and 
things, to vary a greeting, comprehend a hint, in- 
sinuate praise, make each guest feel that she thinks 
his presence of much consequence. She is affable onlj^, 
she merely possesses kindness and serenity. For my- 
self, I desire nothing more, and I can imagine nothing 
better. But it is clear that a woman of the world — 
that is to say a person who wishes to make her house a 
place of meetiDg frequented and valued by the most 
distinguished persons of every species — requires to 

have a more varied and a more delicate talent. C 

greatly admires the facility with which a young mar- 
ried lady among us gets to know the world. A month 
after her marriage she knows how to do the honours to 



MARRIAGES AND MARRIED WOMEN. 105 

everybody in her house. In like manner a shop- 
keeper's wife takes her place at the desk the day after 
her wedding — understands the tricks of the trade, 
chats, smiles, retains the customers. I have seen the 
contrast in a restaurant at Dieppe. The French hus- 
band, always attentive and smiling, sped around the 
tables bowing and scraping, and seemed to take 
pleasure in waiting on the people ; his English wife, 
stiff and solemn, said in an icy tone to the persons 
rising from the table, *' 'Ave yer paid, sir ? '^ She 
never suspected that such a question put in this way 
could annoy. As a compensation, my friends said that 
French politeness was but veneer — an ornament ; 
many foreigners misinterpret it. You haA^e received 
them well, they think you their friend, and are greatly 
surprised to be forgotten by you three days afterwards. 
Our obliging demonstrations are not all the effect of 
true sympathy, but of natural goodness ; we perform 
them, owing to education, custom, as a matter of 
honour, and even a little through egotism. They are 
a proof of our good breeding; we vaguely feel that 
the same will be done us in return ; for a quarter of 
an hour we enter an agreeable atmosphere of respect 
and mutual civilities ; we lay hold of this pleasant 
opportunity, and we give ourselves up to it, without 
its leading to any result in our eyes. A piece of polite- 
ness is repaid by a piece of politeness, ?,s one anecdote 
by another anecdote ; I have repaid you ; the ex- 
change made, we are quits ; I go my way, you go 
yours ; neither of us has anything more to claim from 
the other, save at the next meeting a smile and a bow. 
The Englishman is more thoroughly cordial and ser- 
viceable. He puts himself to inconvenience for the 
foreigner who is introduced to him ; he goes about 



IC& NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

to serve him ; he gives himself trouble on his behalf. 
As well as I can decide from my own experience, this 
judgment is correct. In the first place, I have never 
found the English selfish and discourteous, as they are 
represented to be. In London and in the country I 
I have inquired my way hundreds of times ; every one 
pointed it out, and several gave themselves trouble, 
accompanying me far enough to put me in the right 
path. In an omnibus or in a railway carriage, when I 
have requested my neighbour to inform me, he has 
always, done so with good grace ; when I attempted to 
converse, he did not smile at my blunders of speech, 
and he talked with me in a kindly fashion. One 
evening lately, when on foot at some distance from my 
hotel, a gentleman whom I accosted wished to accom- 
pany me back, spoke in praise of France, asked me 
what I thought of London, and shook hands with me 
at parting. Another, on a like occasion, made me 
enter his carriage and drove me to a cab-stand. The 
newspapers announcing the arrival of three thousand 
French Orpheonists, remarked that they must be 
welcomed with heartiness, in order that they might 
return home with a good opinion of England. On no 
single occasion has a policeman, an official, a cabman, 
or conductor been rude or insolent to me. But what 
is altogether admirable, and perhaps unique in Europe, 
is their manner of practising hospitality ; I cannot 
think without grateful feelings of that which I have 
received. The person to whom one presents a letter 
of introduction does not consider himself quits by an 
invitation to dinner ; he gives you information, acts 
as your guide, traces out your plan, charges himself 
with occupying and amusing you, takes you to his 
Club, introduces you to his friends, takes you to his 



MARRIAGES AND MARRIED WOMEN, 107 

parents, introduces you to his set of acquaintances, 
invites you to visit him at his country house, and 
gives you other letters of introduction when you take 
your departure ; you end by saying to him, '' This is 
too much ; I shall never be able to make a return in 
Paris for what you have done for me here." The like 
reception is met with among those to whom you have 
been introduced in the second place, and the same in 
succession ; sometimes, after an hour's conversation, 
the gentleman whom you see for the first time books 
you to come and spend a w^eek at his country seat. 
Should you go, you will be treated as a member of the 
family. Still more striking is the opening of the 
heart ; frequently at the end of one or two days a 
gentleman does not hesitate to tell you about his 
private affairs. I requested information concerning 
domestic matters. Sometimes my host, in order to be 
precise, told me the amount of his income, of his 
expenses, the amount of his rent, the history of his 
fortune, of his family, of his marriage, a quantity of 
minor domestic and personal facts. Persons in society 
are more reticent in France. 

We seek for the causes of this diiference ; the 
following is a summary of them : — The Englishman 
is hospitable ; 1st. On account of weariness : most 
of the persons in society live in the country for eight 
months of the year ; sometimes at a distance from a 
town, and very solitarily ; they have need of con- 
versation, new ideas. 2nd. As an effect of social 
customs ; in London they scarcely speak ; the}'- live 
moving about ; they remain too short a time, some- 
times less than three months ; there is too great a 
crowd, and too much to do ; the country-house is the 
true drawing-room, the place for associating together. 



io8 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

Srd. As an effect of domestic habits; maay children, 
many servants ; in a well-appointed great house order 
and a certain reserve are indispensable ; the habitual 
stoicism of characters and manners operates in the same 
sense. Then, the presence of a stranger does not have 
the result, as among us, of interrupting acquaintance- 
ship, stopping the general impulse, the gaietj^, the chit- 
chat, compelling people to be on their guard, to restrain 
their familiarity and their heedlessness. There is only 
another chair filled at table, in the drawing-room, 
nothing more ; the tone has not changed. 4th. By 
the arrangement for comfort and the service : the or- 
ganisation is perfect, and the machine in order ; the 
domestics are punctual, the rooms ready, the hours 
fixed ; there is nothing to undo or do over again ; nor, 
above all, is there any makeshift required to entertain 
a visitor. 5th. By kindliness, humanit}^, and even by 
conscience ; to be useful is a duty, and a foreigner is 
so thoroughly lost, so little at his ease in the new 
country where he has landed ! He ought to be helped. 



VIII. 



ENGLISH HOUSEHOLDS. 



rpHIS leads t© a consideration of the interiors. Hule 
-*- and discipline are more strongly felt therein 
than among us. In this department, as in the others, 
the meshes of the social net- work are loosened in 
France and tightly drawn in England. 

I have three households in view ; in the one are 
seven domestics, cook and scullery maid, two house- 
maids, lady's maid, coachman, valet ; in the second, 
fifteen ; in the third, eighteen. A man servant has 
from £40 to £50 wages, and, if he be on board wages, 
which is common enough in London, twelve shillings 
a week are added for his board. Each has his post 
rigorously defined. The work is divided, no one 
either trespasses on, or trusts to another. For 
example, in the last of the houses which I have 
just cited, there is a special man for sweeping, carry- 
ing coal, lighting and keeping up the fires. There 
are two classes of servants, the lower and the upper, 
the latter are responsible and transmit the master's 
orders ; at their head is the butler for the men, and 
the head lady's maid for the women ; if a groom 
|should appear with a dirty coat, his master says 
•othing to him, but reprimands the butler. These 



J 10 NOTES ON ENGLAND, 

upper servants are a species of sergeants, who have an 
opinion and the authority of their position : defined 
distribution of employment, hierarchy of powers con- 
stitute the leading traits of a workable organisation. 
And the latter traits complete the former. These 
servants stand on their dignity ; they will enter none 

but a respectable mansion. S , requiring to add a 

housemaid to his staff, thought of a country girl, who, 
not having been married, had a child ; but before 
taking her, he placed the matter before his servants. 
They consulted together, and, owing to the good 
character given of her, admitted the poor girl among 
them. Grenerally their manners are correct, though 
many are young, unmarried, and under the same roof; 

in 8 's whole life but one accident had happened 

in his house. On the other hand they do their work 
conscientiousl}', with perfect punctuality and regu- 
larity, at the appointed time, without fail; they have a 
watchword which they obey to the letter. However, it 
appears as if the machine works of its own accord ; the 
masters have scarcely any need to interfere ; on this 

head S maintains again that .at bottom, in an 

Englishman, there is the sense of duty, that this senti- 
ment reigns in the kitchen and the ante- chamber as 
well as in the ship or the workshop, that none other 
reconciles the subordinate with subordination. Two 
circumstances concur in alleviating it. The ser- 
vants retain their share of independence, and they 
cleave to it. In London many of them have a club, an 
association whereof the members agree not to continue 
longer than two consecutive years in the same house ; 
this is ill order to leave less power to the masters. More- 
over, as their hours are regulated, they are their own 
masters during the intervals of their service. They 



ENGLISH HO USE HOLDS. 1 1 1 

have tlieir hall, a large room wherein they take their 
meals and sit. In the house of which I spoke, their 
dinner and their breakfast are served half an hour 
before those of their masters. They have a small 
library for their use, draughts, chess ; after dinner 
they may go out ; one only is kept to answer the bell. 
In order to obtain much, too much must not be de- 
manded ; he who commands must provide for the phy- 
sical and moral welfare of his subordinates. If he 
desire the obedience of the heart, he must be their 
leader, a true chief, a general and responsible official, 
the accepted and authorised governor of their con- 
duct. In this respect, on Sunday evening, he is their 
spiritual guide, their chaplain ; they may be seen 
entering in a row, the w^omen in front, the men be- 
hind, with seriousness, gravity, and taking their places 
in the drawing-room. The family and visitors are 
assembled. The master reads aloud a short sermon ; 
next a prayer ; then everyone kneels or bends for- 
ward, the face turned towards the wall ; lastly, he 
repeats the Lord's PrajT'er, and, clause by clause, the 
worshippers respond. This done, the servants file off, 
returning in the same order, silently, meditatively. I 
have observed them several times — not a muscle of their 
countenance moved. By this community and direction 
of the moral sentiment, the master succeeds in filling 
his true place. In France he is very far from possessing 
in his house, amongst his servants, and even amongst 
his children, legitimate authority and entire authority. 
I note at once the inconvenience, the opposite side. In 
the habitual commerce of life the English are not easv- 
going; conditions among them are separated by a bar- 
rier, and in place of making a passage through it, they 
strew it with thorns. For example, Mr. N , an 



112 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

Englisliman settled in France, chose a French, tutor 

for Ill's children. At the eiid of a month Mrs. N 

ceased to find him to her taste, spoke no more to him, 
communicated with him by letters only. One evening, 

in the drawing-room, Mr. N went to sleep, and 

Mrs. N began to read. The young man not 

daring to take uj) a book, and not being able to con- 
verse with any one, ended, after many struggles, by 
going to sleep also. Next day she said to him, in a 
dry and arbitrary tone, '' Sir, your conduct last even- 
ing was very improper ; I hope that it will not be 
repeated.'' Some days afterwards a young lady being 
invited with whom he was acquainted, he went and 

seated himself next to her at table. Mrs. ]^ said 

aloud to him, '' Sir, that is not your place ; come and 
sit beside your pupil." He refused, left the table, 
quitted the house, and demanded, according to agree- 
ment, a year's salary. This was refused. A lawsuit 
followed. Mr. N — - — was defeated. This recalls 

an anecdote of the last century. Lord A having 

engaged a French tutor, advised him not to speak any- 
thiug but French to his children. " I am charmed, my 
lord, to find that you lay such store on that tongue." 
"Sir, we despise it, but we wish that in France our 
children should know how to speak as well as the 
natives." One can picture the smiling, effusive air of 
the Frenchman in quest of a compliment, and the im- 
movable features, the haughty tone of the Englishman, 
who returns him a slap in the face. 

The post of governesses in England is not a pleasant 
one ; witness on this head the novels of Charlotte 
Bronte. The majority of those I have seen, had 
assumed a wooden face ; nothing is more surprising 
when such a face is youthful. The tone, the demea- 



ENGLISH HOUSEHOLDS. 1 1 3 

nour, tlie whole is artificial and made to order ; com- 
posed and maintained in such a way as never to give 
an opening ; even after several days of familiarity, and 
out of the house in which they teach, they remain on 
the defensive ; the habit of self- observation and of 
control is too strong ; one might say they were soldiers 
on parade. As to the servants, their expression of 
humble and subdued respect greatly surpasses that of 
those whom we can have known ; it is even unpleasant 
to observe this attitude of a man face to face with a man. 
There is the same fund of stiffness in the inter- 
course of relations. A son when speaking familiarly 
of his father, says, my governor. In fact, by law and 
custom, he is the governor of his house, which is his 
castle, and of the garrison that lodges there. Except 
in the case of an entail, he can disinherit his children, 
and it has been seen that his wife is subject to him. 

Mr. W , a rich landed proprietor, and a gentleman 

of the old school, has, among other children, a son in 
consumption. The poor young man, who returned 
from Nice and felt himself dying, stopped at Boulogne; 
he wished to end his days with his father, in the house 
wherein he was born ; but he neither durst go thither 
without being invited, nor even ask permission. His 
mother, who is ill and wishes to embrace her son again, 
dare not take upon herself to rejoin him. At length, 
one of these days, he received a letter from his father, 
and set off on his journey. The inequality of positions is 
another cause of coldness. Between the eldest son, who 
will be a nobleman with an income of £8,000 a year, 
and the younger son, who will have £200 a year, who 
inhabits two furnished rooms, and spends the day in a 
machine shop in order to become an engineer, the 
distance is too great; real familiarity, fellowship, is 

I 



114 NOTES ON ENGLAND 

impossible. Even wlien similarlj^ educated they feel 
their separation. Two brothers were mentioned to me 
who were both at the University of Oxford, but the 
elder brother had one hundred pounds sterling a year 
more than the younger. Final cause of division is the 
independence of the children : a son, a daughter,' can 
marry without their parents' consent, and very often 
exercise this right ; hence occur squabbles which last a 
lifetime. Meantime, the father knows that his child can 
leave him, run directly counter to his will in the most 
mortifying aaauner. Frequently he says : '' Since you 
have the right, you must take the consequences." 
Reasoning thus, many, above all those who have a 
lesrion of children, do not trouble themselves about 
.marrying their. daughters ; they leave that to them ; it 
is their business, as it is the business of the sons to 
gain a livelihood. That differs greatly from our homes, 
where the parents give themselves up wholly and 
without restriction to their children, where the elder 
sons, the younger sons, the brothers and the sisters are 
so equal among each other, and almost on a footing of 
equality with their parents, the familiarity and the 
intimacy being so complete, where each one considers it 
natural to enter, every day and at every hour, by their 
questions and their counsels, into the thoughts, the 
sentiments, the actions of their relatives, where nothing 
is enclosed nor reserved, where every mind is disclosed, 
opened by an hundred thousand apertures to the 
curiosity and to the sympathy of his kindred. 

The English are surprised at this ; S greatly 

admires our sociability in this particular, our kindly 
character. He has often seen in France two or three 
families together under the same roof and at the same 
table, during six months in the country, sometimes 



ENGLISH HO USE HOLDS. 1 1 5 

tlie entire year in tlie country, in town ; at one time 
two married brothers, at another the parents with 
their son-in-law and their daughter, or with their 
son and their daughter-in-law. Nothing is rarer 
than this in England. Characters clash; each family 
requires to possess its independence as well as its 
abode. We coalesce, we hold everything in com- 
mon ; as for them, even when living together, they 
maintain distinctions, they draw lines of demarca- 
tion. Self is more powerful ; each of them preserves 
a portion of his individuality, his own special and 
personal nook, a kind of forbidden field, enclosed, 
respected by every one, even by the brother and 
the father, even by the sister, even by the mother ; 
to enter it would be an intrusion ; no one gains ad- 
mission, save perhaps the beloved person, the husband, 
the wife, to whom all one's life is pledged. This 
reserved circle is larger or smaller according to the 
personages. It includes at one time business matters, 
questions of money and of ambition, at another certain 
profound sentiments, a hope, a love disappointment, 
an old and protracted mourning, at another intimate 
and lofty ideas, for instance religious beliefs ; some- 
times it embraces them ail ; then the personage is 
tongue-tied, and does not like to be spoken to. But 
in every case the line he has traced around him 
remains intact; he does not overstep it when unre- 
served. If over-leapt by any one, it is owing to an 
indiscretion which cuts him to the quick ; his relatives 
abstain from doing so as they would from house- 
breaking. Thus a father or mother is more imper- 
fectly informed than among us as to the sentiments of 
their daughter, as to the business and the pleasures of 
their son. 



ii6 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 



I 



To make this obvious, would require too lengthened 
detail. I shall cite but one trait. In France a son 
tells his mother everything, even about his mis- 
tresses ; the usage is ancient. Madame de Sevigne 
received from her son secrets which she related to 
her daughter — very improper and very distinct secrets 
— and which she was only able to express, owing 
to her verve, her gaiety, her wonderful lightness 
of touch. Even at the present day, without going 
so far back, very many young men make similar 
avowals to their mothers, or at least hint — allow them 
to suspect, an affair of gallantry. The mothers are 
not scandalised at this, they are too happy to be made 
confidants, almost companions. They scold a little, 
smile faintly, and, lifting the finger, send away the 

naughty fellow, telling him to take care. B is 

of opinion that this is impossible in England ; the son 
would not dare do it, the mother would be shocked 
or indignant. So in other matters ; they have no 
acquaintance with these boundless conversations, these 
complete outpourings, where the differences in age 
compensate for the difference of sex, where the son 
entering the world finds in his mother separating her- 
self from the world his most skilful guide and his 
most thorough friend. 

These habits of reserve lead to a kind of stoicism. 
Even among their kindred they are not expansive, they 
are self-restrained. In a family which has lost a very 
near relative, a father, a son, there are never cries nor 
outbursts. From the morrow every one comes down, 
taking their places at table at the ordinary hour, and 
in the same manner ; they merely talk rather less than 
their wont ; it is all very well to feel sorrow, they 
have to do their work, whatever it be, as well and as 



ENGLISH HOUSEHOLDS, 117 

conscientiously as before. When the Queen, after 
Prince Albert's death, shut herself up alone and ap- 
peared to have given up the receptions and other 
occupations of her post, the newspapers, after allowing 
several months to elapse, began to blame her, and 
declared to her that a private loss did not absolve any- 
one from public obligations. A writer in the National 
Revieio praises Eugenie de Guerin, so pure and so 
melancholy ; but, according to him, she is wrong in 
giving expression to her sadness and even in being sad. 
''An Englishwoman of right and healthy mind would 
consider cheerfulness a duty in itself, and would refrain 
from expressing distaste for life.'^ I have badly trans- 
lated the word '' cheerfulness " (gakte), being unable 
to render it ; it means the opposite of dejection, a sort 
of smiling serenity. JN'owhere is this sentiment nobler, 
more touching to notice than on the face of old ladies. 
One of them, bed-ridden for ten years, was still kindly 
and composed. The children were taken to her night 
and morning, she knew and laid down their daily pro- 
gramme, exacted an account of the whole family doings, 
did fancy work, read, and prayed, was never a moment 
idle ; weariness had not stamped one wrinkle on her 
brow. Another, seventy-five, a great-grandmother, 
had the smooth complexion of a nun. Two among 
them are engraven in my memory like a fine Dutch 
picture. It was in the country, in a lofty drawing- 
room papered with white and- pearl-grey ; the clear 
colour was softened by the shades. of evening. The 
large central window curved outwards above a flower 
bed, and, through its shining squares of glass, green 
fields were seen. On a chair, close to the light, a 
beautiful young girl, intelligent and cold, gravely read 
a small religious work. In the middle, two old ladies, 



1 1 8 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

before the tea-table, entertained their guest. Faces 
with large features, serene, determined, even command- 
ing ; in this single respect, they differed from the 
Flemish portraits. For costume they had dresses of 
black silk in ample folds, lace at the neck and wrists, 
rich caps of falling gauze, white embroideries at the 
stomacher as in the figures of Mierevelt ; the degree of 
stiffness and opulence which displeases in the attire of 
young ladies was well adapted to their years and to 
their gravity. All around were the marks of perfect 
independence, of an undisputed position, of a balanced 
mind, of a healthy soul, of a worthy life. The one 
who was seventy and had the look of fifty is un- 
married ; through her family relations she has mixed 
with the first spirits of France and of England ; during 
the season she goes to stay with friends, at home she 
reads. Dickens and the moderns appear to her low and 
strained, she enjoys more the writers who possess eleva- 
tion and solidity — M. Guizot, M. Mignet, Ilallara, 
Macaulay, the last rather less than the others, Arnold, 
Dean Stanley, others besides who write about morality 
and religion as respectful liberals, just as in France, 
among the upper middle- class, in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, the ladies read Du Guet and Nicole. The second 
has four sons settled abroad, the most of them Consuls 
or Charge d' Affaires, one in Africa, another in Turke}^, 
another in Sweden ; every two years each of them 
comes and spends a fortnight with her. She is not 
melancholy on account of being alone and so far from 
them ; she is contented, like a Eoman mother, to know 
that they are all " in a position so honourable and so 
useful to their country." 

Amid all this, I think, tv/o things are visible ; the 
one is the native and acquired energy, the force of 



ENGLISH HOUSEHOLDS. jig 

character by which, a man masters himself, always 
keeps himself in check, is self-sufficing, risks and resists 
misfortune, sorrow, and disappointment ; the other is 
the institution of a hierarchy which, even in private 
life, upholds inequality, subordination, authority, and 
order. But there is the reverse of every medal. As 
far as I can judge this character and this system of 
rule produce many tyrants, louts, mutes, down-trodden 
and eccentric persons. A certain number of homes 
resemble that of the Harlowe family in E,ichardson; 
but on that head an observer's mouth is closed. I 
send the reader to the pictures of George Eliot, of 
Dickens, and of Thackeray ; see in particular in 
Thackeray the portraits of Lord Steyne, of Barnes 
Newcome, of Lady Kew, of old Osborne, and of the 
step-mother of Clive New come. 



IX. 

ENGLISH SCHOOL BOYS AND SCHOOL LIFE. 

I^XCUESTON to Harrow-on-the-Hill ; I have also 
-^ seen Eton. Harrow, Eton, Rugby, are tlie prin- 
cipal places of secondary instruction, and nearly cor- 
respond to our large lyceums ; at Eton tliere are 
al out eight hundred boys, and five hundred in each of 
1} e others, from thirteen to eighteen. But, between 
these schools and our lyceums, the difference is enor- 
mous, and no other comparison gives greater pro- 
minence to the contrast between the two nations. I 
am told that I may take Harrow as a specimen. 

This is an independent, private establishment, with- 
out State aid, originally founded by a legacy, and, con- 
sequently, provided with landed estate and an hereditary 
revenue. Sometimes the revenue yielded hj such a 
property is very large ; at Harrow it is small (£1,100). 
Large or small, it is administered by a body of trustees 
who are renewed by election. Here there are six, great 
lords and proprietors of the neighbourhood, v/ho are 
empowered to make considerable changes, and to 
appoint the head-master. But the principal part of 
the machine is the staff of under-masters ; each of 
them undertakes a course of study (Greek, Latin, 
French, Mathematics, &c.), and, in addition, lodges and 



ENGLISH SCHOOL LIFE. 121 

feeds in his house from ten to thirty boarders. When 
there is but a dozen of them thej^ take their meals at 
his table- with his family ; sometimes, when they are 
more numerous, they take their meals at two tables 
presided over by the ladies of the house. Commonl}^, 
two occupy the same bedroom ; the oldest have rooms 
to themselves. Thus, the child transplanted into the 
school, finds there a likeness to the paternal mansion, 
the more so because families are so large in England. 
He has his room, he dines at three paces from a lady, 
he is a person among persons, he lives in a natural and 
complete position, and is not, as among us, subjected 
to the communism of a barrack. 

Another difference ; among us a lyceum is a large box 
of stone which one enters through a single hole, furnished 
with a grating and a porter ; in the interior are some 
courts resembling yards, sometimes a wretched row of 
trees, by way of compensation plenty of walls. As the 
box is always in a great city, the young man who passes 
without the grating does not find beyond any more than 
within it, anything but stone and brick. Here the school 
is in a little town, with a hundred free openings upon 
the country. At Eton, around the old central quadrangle, 
I saw roses, ivy, honeysuckle climbing everywhere 
along the buildings ; in the distance are rich meadows, 
wherein huge elms spread their venerable branches ; 
close to them is a green and shining river ; upon the 
water are swans ; in the islands cattle ruminate ; the cur- 
rent winds and disappears towards the horizon amidst 
foliage. At Harrow, the landscape is less pleasing, but 
verdure and the open air are not wanting ; a meadow 
of ten or twelve acres belongs to the school, and sup- 
plies a ground for cricket. I met the little boys in 
black jackets, the big ones in black coats, all wearing 



122 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

on their liead a small straw hat, uot only in the town, 
but without the town, along the hedgerows, on the 
banks of the pond ; their muddy boots show that they 
are always on the roads or in damp meadows. Thus, 
while among us the season of youth is spent under a 
bell-glass through which penetrates the moral and phy- 
sical atmosphere of a capital, among them it is spent 
in the open air, without imprisonment of any sort, in 
the constant companionship of fields, of waters, and of 
woods. ]^[ow it is a great point for the body, the 
imagination, the mind, and the character to be deve- 
loped in a position healthy, calm, and conformed to the 
mute exigencies of their instincts. 

On the whole, human nature is more respected here 
and more unaffected. Under this education, the chil- 
dren resemble the trees of an English garden ; under 
ours, to the clipped and ordered yews of Versailles. 
For instance, here the children are almost as free as 
students ; they are bound to attend classes, lessons, 
dinner, to enter at an appointed hour in the evening, 
nothing more ; the remainder of the da}^ is their own ; 
it can be spent in their own fashion. The sole duty 
weighing upon these hours of freedom is the obliga- 
tion to perform the prescribed task ; but they may do it 
where they please and when they please ; they work in 
their own rooms or elsewhere. I have seen some stud}'- 
ing with the librarian, others reading seated on a 
balustrade. They follow their taste, wander where 
they like. They are to be seen in the streets, in the 
pastrycooks, in the cookshop ; they scour the countr}^, 
fish, skate, bathe, go birds' -nesting. They are masters 
of jheir time and of their money also, give themselves 
treats, purchase ornaments for their rooms. It appears 
that they get into debt, their little private furniture is 



ENGLISH SCHOOL LIFE, 123 

sold to the highest bidder. They have initiative and 
responsibility ; it is curious to see youths of twelve 
elevated to the dignity of men. 

Eight hours' work daily is the maximum ; most fre- 
quently six or seven ; among us eleven, which is irra- 
tional. The young have need of physical movement ; it 
is running counter to nature to oblige them to be pure 
brain, sedentary cripples. Here athletic games — ■ 
tennis, football, races, boating, and, above all, cricket, 
occupy a portion of every day ; in addition, twice 
or thrice weekly, the classes are suspended in the 
afternoon in order to give place to them. Self-love is 
mixed up with this ; each school endeavours to surpass 
its rivals, and sends, to the trial of strength, oarsmen 
and players carefully trained and chosen. Harrow beat 
Eton last year, and hopes to win this year also. To- 
day, eleven of the oldest and best players uphold the 
reputation of the school against eleven players from 
London ; two flag-bearers, flag in hand, mark the 
bounds, hundreds of youths line the sides, at a distance, 
and applaud happy strokes. The affair is serious ; their 
opponents belong to a celebrated cricketing club, all 
being admirably skilled, strong, and cool ; the youths 
have a right to be passionately fond of an exercise 
which grown-up men make the principal object of their 
life. Indeed, there are gentlemen in this country whose 
ambition and course of living are those of a Grecian 
athlete ; they subject themselves to a particular diet, 
abstaining from all excess at table and in drinking ; 
they develop their muscle, and submit themselves to a 
wise system of training. When prepared, the}^ proceed 
and compete for the prizes for boating or cricket at all 
the great competitions in England, even farther off", in 
America. I was informed of a cricketinj]: eleven who 



124 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

went to Australia with 'this design, just as in other 
days the athletes of Pontus and Marseilles went to 
Olympus. It is not at all surprising if the youth 
become enthusiastic for games so much in repute ; 
the head of the eleven cricketers, the captain of the 
eight oarsmen, is a more important personage in the 
school than the best scholar. 

These already constitute germs of association, an 
apprenticeship in commanding and obeying, since each 
lot which plays at cricket submits to discipline and 
selects a head. But the principle is still more widely 
applicable ; j^ouths and young men form together an 
organised body, a kind of minor State apart, having 
its chiefs and its laws. These chiefs are the boys of 
the sixth form, more particularly the fifteen monitors, 
and in each boarding-house the first pnpil. Thej^ keep 
order, enforce the rules, and, in general, hold the place 
of our ushers. They hinder the strong from bullying 
the weak, are arbitrators in disputes, intervene when a 
boy has got into a scrape with a villager or a shop- 
keeper, punishing the delinquents. In short, here the 
pupils are governed by pupils, and each one after 
having submitted to authority exercises it in turn. 
During the last year he is enlisted on the side of the 
regulations, he makes them prevail, he feels their 
utility, he adopts them with all his heart instead of 
kicking against them, as a French schoolboy does not 
hesitate to do. Hence, when he leaves school and 
enters life he is less disposed to consider rule absurd 
and authority ridiculous ; he understands freedom and 
subordination ; he has more nearly comprehended the 
conditions of a society, the rights and the duties of a 
citizen. Besides this general preparation, there is a 
special one. The bigger boys form debating societies 



ENGLISH SCHOOL LIFE. 125 

amongst themselves, wliere they discuss moral and 
political topics ; the head-master is only the honorary 
president. After the young speakers have addressed 
the meeting, the vote is taken, the arguments and 
the debate are summarised in a report ; it is a par- 
liament in miniature. In addition, three of the oldest 
boys edit a review — The Triumvirate. Their aim "is 
to arouse in their comrades extended ideas of patriotism 
and to interest them in the affairs of the country." 
They belong to the Conservative opposition, argue 
about the French alliance, about the elections, about 
the right of election. There are some commonplaces 
and there is a little inflation, but good sense is not 
absent ; for example, with regard to the right of re- 
presentation which they wish to extend, but up to a 
certain limit only, they appeal to their young reader's 
experience ; during the holidays in the country he has 
seen that the villagers, the shopkeepers of the proposed 
class, are sufficiently intelligent and educated to vote 
rightly ; thus the argument is practical, drawn from 
facts, and not from a pompous theory. I have just 
read a number of this review ; certainly our students 
of rhetoric have by no means anything approaching to 
the same degree of culture and political information. 
Add another trait still ; all, or nearly all, are religiously 
disposed ; they would be shocked at an irreverent word ; 
they sing earnestly in chapel. Since Arnold's time, the 
aim of education has been to produce Christian gentle- 
men ; most of them are professedly religious, take the 
Sacrament, and pray nightly of their own accord. Thus 
when they enter the world, they are the upholders, and 
not the adversaries, of the great ecclesiastical esta- 
blishment, of the national religion. 

On all hands I arrive at the same conclusion : in 



126 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

Eiiglcmd there is not a profound separation between 
the life of the child and that of the adult ; the 
school and society are on an equal footing, with no in- 
termediate moat or wall ; the one leads to and prepares 
for the other. The adult does not, as among us, leave 
a hothouse in compartments, an exceptional rule, a 
special atmosphere. He is not troubled, taken out of 
his element by the change of air. JN^ot only has he 
cultivated his mind, but he has also undergone an 
apprenticeship to life. Not only does he possess ideas, 
but these ideas are suited to the world which receives 
him. In politics, in religion, he finds a place quite 
ready for him at twenty, for which, his tastes and his 
faculties have been adapted beforehand. In this man- 
ner he most easily escapes scepticism ; he more rapidly 
settles down ; he experiments less to find an employ- 
ment for his powers. All those whom I have seen in 
the class, in the fields, and in the streets, have a 
healthy and active, decided, and energetic air. Evi- 
dently, to my eyes at least, they are greater children 
and more manly ; greater children, that is to say, more 
addicted to play and less inclined to pass the limits 
of their years ; more manly, that is to say, more inde- 
pendent, more capable of governing themselves and of 
acting. On the contrary, the French schoolboy, above 
all the inmates of our colleges, is wearied, embittered, 
rendered acute, precoci^.us, and too precocious ; he is 
caged up, and his imagination ferments. In all these 
respects, and in what relates to the formation of cha- 
racter, English education is superior ; it better prepares 
for the world and forms healthier minds. 

The author of ''Torn Brown's School-days'' says, 
" When I formed the project of writing this book I 
endeavoured to represent to myself the most common 



ENGLISH SCHOOL LIFE. 127 

type of a little English boy of the upper middle class, 
such as I had witnessed in ray experience ; and I faith- 
fully maintain this type from the beginning to the end 
of my story, while merely striving to give a good 
specimen of the species." The book thus conceived 
had an enormous success. Youths and adults all re- 
cognised themselves in the picture, and we can make 
use of it, in admitting with the author that the portrait, 
if not flattered, is at least kindly. Neither Tom nor his 
father cared much for education properly so called. 
His father asks himself, " Shall I tell him to mind his 
work, and say he's sent to school to make himself a 
good scholar ? Well, but he isn't sent to school for that 
— at any rate not for that mainly. I don't care a straw 
for Greek particles, or the digamma, no more does his 
mother. What is he sent to school for ? Well, 
partly because he wanted so to go. If he'll only 
turn out a brave, helpful, truth- telling Englishman, 
and a gentleman, and a Christian, that's all I want." 
And when Tom, several years afterwards, asks him- 
self what he came to school for, he replies : — " I 
want to be A 1 at cricket and football and all the 
other games, and to make my hands keep my head 

against any fellow, lout or gentleman I want 

to carry away just as much. Latin and Greek as will 

take me through Oxford respectably I want 

to leave behind me the name of a fellow who never 
bullied a little boy or turned his back on a big 
one." 

Remarkable words, and well summarising the ordi- 
nary sentiments of an English father and child ; science 
and mental culture occupy the last place ; character, 
heart, courage, strength, and bodily skill are in the 
first row. Such an education produces moral and 



i-zS NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

physical wrestlers, with all tKe advantages, but also 
with all the drawbacks, attached to this direction of 
the mind and the bod^^ 

Along with other unpleasant effects the rude instincts 
are developed. An Eton master states that "play 
takes the first place, books the second." The child 
makes it his glory, like Tom Brown, to be a good 
athlete ; he spends three, four, five hours daily in 
rough and violent exercises. At hares and hounds 
one flounders for hours in ploughed fields and in 
muddy meadows, one stumbles in the mud, one loses 
one's shoes, one picks oneself up as well as possible. 
At football the sides precipitate themselves upon each 
other ; the child underneath bears the weight of the 
entire mass, arms and legs are dislocated, collar-bones 
broken. At cricket the great heavy ball is thrown 
with such force that the unskilful wicket-keeper is 
knocked down, if struck by it. Nearly all the 
games habitually yield bruises ; pride is taken in 
not minding them ; and by a natural consequence, 
there is no more hesitation in inflicting than in sub- 
mitting to them. The child becomes a fighter, a boxer ; 
the author of " Tom Brown '' says, " To fight with 
fists is the natural and English way for English boys 
to settle their quarrels." All the men I have met 
did so when at school, and this is still common. This 
kind of duel has its rules, its appointed place, its 
audience, its witnesses. Each combatant has two 
seconds who sponge his face, and put forward their 
knee for a seat during the rounds ; these encounters 
are renewed, and sometimes prolonged during half- 
an-hour. The maxim is to go on fighting as long 
as one can see clearly and stand upright ; after the 
fight there are black eyes, swollen and livid cheeks, 



ENGLISH SCHOOL LIFE. 129 

sometimes a thumb put out of joint, or a lip cut 
open. 

Unfortunately the school arrangements operate in 
the same direction ; in addition to impositions, the being- 
kept from play and confinement, the birch is used ; in 
certain schools, it is enough for a boy to appear three 
times on the black list, for him to have to prepare for 
a flogging. This morning four were flogged at Harrow 
(fourteen strokes, not drawing blood). In all the 
schools it is the head-master to whom this amiable 
ofiice appertains ; there is hardly a head-master in 
France who would accept, at such a price, a salary of 
£6,000. In principle all are liable to the birch, even 
the bigger boys; yet scarcely any but the younger 
and smaller ones are subjected to it. A strange thing 
is that it is not unpopular. Fifty years ago at the 
Charterhouse the boys, hearing that it was proposed 
to substitute a fine for it, rebelled, crying, ''Down 
with fines ! hurrah for the birch ! " and on the morrow 
they renewed acquaintance with the beloved birch. The 
teachers with whom I have conversed consider that 
this chastisement is not humiliating, and that it de- 
velops special courage in the child ; according to them 
the strokes are a natural form of repression ; it is 
enough that opinion does not regard them as shameful, 
and that the sufi'erer does not feel himself insulted. 
Under the head-master, the big boys entrusted with 
maintaining discipline have the right to inflict the 
same punishment. For this purpose they carry a 
cane in certain schools, and use it. 

Here a shocking institution must be referred to — 
this is '' fagging," or the obligation of the little boys 
to be the servants of the bigger. It has been modi- 
fied, softened, at Harrow, at Rugby, and in some other 

K 



130 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

establishments ; but in itself it always continues bad ; 
for it is a school of brutality, and pushes the English 
child towards the side to which he inclines, towards all 
the excesses which the energetic, violent, tyrannical, 
and hard temperament admits of. A lady whom we 
know, and who is in truth of foreign extraction, could 
not bring herself to subject her son to fagging, and 
has put him in a Parisian lyceum. According to 
official inquirers the small boys are valets and slaves. 
Each big boy has several, who are bound to run errands 
for him, to sweep his room, to clean his candlesticks, 
to toast his bread and his cheese, to call him at the ap- 
pointed time, to help him at his games, frequently dur- 
ing two or three hours daily, to run after his balls, and 
return them to him, to be at his orders during all the time 
he is awake, to endure his caprices. ^' At Westminster 
School the life of a foundation scholar for the first year 
is such an uninterrupted servitude that it is impossible 
for him to find the necessary time for his studies." " I 
state as a fact," said one witness, " that from the 1st of 
January to the 31st of December, the young foundation 
scholar has not a single moment which is not exposed 
to interruption. At half-past three in the morning, 
two of the younger, chosen in succession, rise to light 
the fire, boil the water, call up those of the big boys 
who have ordered this to be done. Frequently, the 
senior, awakened at four o'clock, does not get up till 
half-past seven ; he must then be called every half 
hour. This task falls to each of the small boys two 
or three times weekly." Add all those of the daj^, all 
those of the evening. *' The seniors are very fond of 
tea, they must have it three times in the course of the 
evening, without saying anything of coffee. Every 
two minutes the kettles must be filled for them." 



ENGLISH SCHOOL LIFE. 131 

One of the witnesses relates that on Saturday night, a 
holiday at Westminster, when his son arrived home 
from school he was so thoroughly broken down for 
want of sleep, that he had no other desire than to go to 
bed. In order to maintain such an exact and minute 
obedience the big boys use terror. " Boxes on the ears, 
kicks are mere common pranks of theirs, these not 

counting among the numerous punishments In 

the iirst degree the real punishments are sj^stematic 
boxes on the ears ; the ofiender must keep his hands 
at his sides and hold his head forward to receive a 
dozen slaps applied right and left." On other occasions 
he places the palm of his hand on the table, the back 
of the hand is then beaten with the blade of a paper- 
knife till sometimes a gash is made. Caning comes 
next, then two kinds of tanning. The boy is beaten 
on the fleshy part of the leg with a racket-bat, which 
breaks the skin and makes the blood flow. He places 
his foot on a sink the height of a table, th.e executioner 
then takes a run of two or three paces and kicks the 
part exposed. The reporter states, " I have heard of 
two or three caoes in which the boys were so cruelly 
bruised, that they were unable for a long time to join 
in the games and other exercises.'' Tom Brown was 
tossed in a blanket, and thrown upwards with such force 
that he struck the ceiling. One day having refused to 
sell his lottery-tickets to the big boys, he was seized 
hold of, held np before the blazing fire, and roasted 
(literally) and till he was ready to faint. This actually 
occurred, the romance being but a reproduction of an 
authentic fact. Besides, in the lives of Cowper, Lord 
Byron, Sir Robert Peel, other cases, equally revolting, 
are to be found. Doubtless the instances just cited are 
the darkest, and, as the English are persevering in 



I3Z NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

matters of reform, the picture is becoming brighter. 
Yet, even supposing the reform completed, the impres- 
sion continues unpleasant ; for, on the whole, a school 
conducted in this style is a sort of primitive society, 
where force reigns almost uncontrolled, all the more 
so because it is considered a point of honour among 
the oppressed not to denounce their oppressors. Tho 
master interferes as little as possible ; he is not, as 
among us, the perpetual representative of humanity 
and justice ; very seldom and in very few schools is an 
appeal made to him or to the governing body. Tho 
weak are left to themselves, they have but to suifer and 
be patient. JN^ow what a temptation is it for a vigorous 
youth to possess the power and the right to flog ! It 
is not a good thing to give the rein to the instincts of 
domination and of brutality. The use always leads to 
the abuse ; an incentive to what is unreasonable is 
given by the irrationality which is practised, to blows 
by the blows which are given ; a man ought never be 
allowed the opportunity for becoming a despot and an 
executioner. On the whole, education thus understood 
is not destitute of resemblance to that of the Lacede- 
monians ; they hardened the body and tempered the 
character, but, as w^ell as I can conjecture, they often 
6nded by producing hunters and louts. 

Natural^, the cultivation of the mind must suifer 
from such a training. Mr. Farrar writes : " When 
seeing young men ready to sacrifice everything to 
cricket, when seeing them devote to it a number 
of liours and an enthusiasm out of all proportion to 
that which they gi^e to their work, when seeing that 
their mind is so emphatically taken up with it that 
they speak, think, and dream of nothing but cricket, 
it is not surprising to find many persons attributing to 



ENGLISH SCHOOL LIFE. 133 

this affectation of muscularity tlie miserable poverty of 
the intellectual results which we obtain." A vice 
unknown among us, which is due to this prepon- 
derance of the physical over the moral faculties, is 
gluttony, and, above all, the fondness for wine ; hence 
one of the faults punishable by flogging is drunken- 
ness ; many stuff themselves with eatables, and among 
them are to be found precocious drunkards. 

The teaching is not what is requisite for counter- 
balancing these gross tastes ; there is nothing attrac- 
tive about it; it can hardly be considered by the young- 
people as other than a task ; it is very slightly literary 
and altogether technicaL The chief aim is to know 
Greek and Latin well, to write correctly in verse and 
prose in these two languages; in fact, by dint of 
memory and exercises, the most clever succeed in doing 
so. On one point, the knowledge and the manipula- 
tion of Greek, they are far superior to the pupils of our 
lyceums ; I have in my hands prize exercises, in which 
scenes from Shakespeare are very well translated into 
Greek iambics in the style of Sophocles. But on other 
points I consider them inferior. Their Latin, prose 
and verse, is less elegant and less pure than that of 
our good compositions of the class of rhetoric. They 
do not appear to be really acquainted with historj^ ; 
they recount the legends of Curtius and of Regulus as 
authenticated facts. They descant on chivalry and the 
Middle Age in vague generalities, as was done in our 
old University. They do not appear to apprehend the 
difference of manners, of sentiments, of ideas, of cha- 
racters which is the result of centuries. They do not 
seem to have read, like our good scholars, the works 
of a genuine historian, of a Thierry, of a Michelet, of 
a Guizot. In general, they have few ideas ; if the 



134 NOTES ON ENGLAND.^ 

questions relating to existing and practical contempo- 
rary politics are excepted, a student of rhetoric in a 
Parisian lyceum possesses more. They have read many 
classical texts ; but the explanation which is given to 
them is wholly grammatical and positive. ISTothing is 
done to set forth the beauty of the passage, the delicacies 
of the style, the pathos of the situation ; nor is the pro- 
cess of the writer indicated, the character of his talents, 
the turn of his mind ; all that would seem vague. The 
master does not speak to the pupils as a critic to per- 
sons of taste; he does not endeavour to refine their 
literary touch ; he does not comment upon the great 
writers of their country. It is the same in mathe- 
matics ; he teaches formulas rather than the spirit ; 
the manual of geometry is always the text of Euclid 
learned and said by heart ; reason and reasoning hold 
but a secondary place. " Too frequently this teaching 
tends to form Greek scholars and calculators.'* On 
the contrary, the young Frenchman of nineteen 
possesses, if he be intelligent, and if he has been 
studious, general instruction, a quantity of ideas 
blocked out, some half ideas of his own, a decided 
preference for certain authors and a certain form of 
style, the embryos of theories, vague views about the 
beautiful, about history, about philosophy, at least the 
sentiment that there are vast questions of first import- 
ance on which he requires to form an opinion, a 
requirement all the more pressing because around him 
scepticism floats in the air, because, most frequently, 
he has lost his religious beliefs, because no prevailing 
doctrine, imposed or accepted, is at hand to arrest his 
fluctuating mind, and because, if he desires to cast 
anchor in a port, he is obliged to seek for the port and 
forge the anchor. Here many distinguished English- 



ENGLISH SCHOOL LIFE. 135 

men whom I have known consider their school and even 
their university education as a simple preparation, a 
gymnastic, a training of the attention and of the 
memory, nothing more. They said to me, " When 
fioisbed with that, we have been obliged to undo, or 
rather to form, our education; to acquire by personal 
reading all that we have succeeded in learning about 
philosophy, about history, about political economy, 
about the natural sciences, about art, about literature." 
A remedy is being found for this defect, the circle is 
now being enlarged ; but it is still narrow, always 
having Euclid and Sapphic verse as its centre. In con- 
sequence, the mind, becoming adult at a later period, 
arrives later at forming comprehensive views. 

Final detail, and a crowning one, marks the dif- 
ference between the two countries : the average out- 
lay for keeping a boy at Harrow is £200 yearly. 
How many fathers among us would be able to expend 
£200 yearly on their son's education ? In France a 
functionary, a man attached to one of the professions 
called liberal, makes most frequently £120 at thirty, 
and £200 at fifty ; and, commonly, he has for addition 
the interest on a very small capital. Then, as com- 
pensation, to keep his son at college costs him £40 
onl}", £20 at a minor seminar}^, and the bursaries 
given by the State are numerous. It may be calcu- 
lated, I think, that a classical education is five times 
cheaper in France than in England. They admit 
themselves that one of their national vices is the habit 
of lavish expenditure. As regards primary instruction, 
the parliamentary grant merely aids 8,500 schools ; 
the same grant would maintain 25,000 in France. It 
would entirely educate 1,500,000 French children in 
place of 950,000 English. Mr. Arnold estimates that 



136 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

tlie expense of maintaining and administering the 
French schools, in proportion, is the fourth of that of 
the English schools. At Oxford, whither I shall go to- 
morrow, and in the Universities in geneial, B tells 

me that on an average an undergraduate spends £300 
a year; however, £200 yearly are sufficient; some, by 
dint of economy, live upon £100. The author of 
" Tom Brown at Oxford " mentions that a very poor 
student managed with £75, but only because he was 
lodged gratis, and on condition of being despised. 
Among us, a student of medicine or of law who should 
have £75 and his lodgings found him, would consider 
himself well off; many of them have no more than 
£60, and it never enters into the head of the richest 
to despise his poor comrade. 



LIFE AT THE ITNIVEESITY. 

TTERE am I at Oxford, in the company of a Fellow, 
-*-■- who replies to all my questions with extreme 
courtesy. We are in a garden full of flowers ; at the side, 
separated by a wall, is a fine kitchen garden, the one 
and the other are the dependencies of the residence of 
a professor ; a more pleasant and poetical abode for a 
studious man cannot be imagined. But I shall return 
to that ; I now proceed to transcribe our conversation. 

Oxford is a collection of twenty-four colleges or dis- 
tinct, independent foundations, having each an average 
revenue of £15,000 ; Magdalen College has £40,000 
and upwards. In addition, the city contains a Uni- 
versity of professors, serving as a centre for the col- 
leges. 

A college is composed fl) of a head, having from 
£1,000 to £3,000 yearly; (2) of fellows, having from 
£200 to £300 ; (3) of tutors, paid in part out of the 
college chest, in part by the undergraduates, having 
from £400 to £500 ; (4) of scholars, students who 
have obtained scholarships through merit, having £30 
and upwards ; (^5) of undergraduates who pay, to the 
number of from forty to eighty. The rest of the 
revenues of the establishment pays servants — the 



138 NOTES ON ENGLAND 

cooks, tlie porters, &c. ; and, in addition, tlie stewards 
who administer the properties. 

The University is a body of professors analogous to 
our College of France ; an undergraduate is not 
obliged to attend their lectures. Most of the pro- 
fessors have salaries of from £500 to £600 ; two or 
three chairs yield less than £800 ; as compensation, 
another yields £1,000, and certain professors of the- 
ology have as much as £1,600 ; sometimes a canonry, 
cathedral deanery, is attached to the chair, and yields 
from £1,000 to £3,000, besides the use of a large 
house and a garden. But they are obliged to live 
handsomely, to display hospitality, to contribute to all 
sorts of subscriptions, &c., so that, like the Bishops 
and the high public officials, they often expend their 
whole salary. 

There are about thirteen hundred undergraduates at 
Oxford, eleven hundred at Cambridge ; there are also 
some at London. But, as a general rule, this high 
finishing place of education is for the aristocracy^, for 
the rich, for the minority ; in the first place because 
it is expensive (from £200 to £300 yearly, and the 
temptation to expend more is very great), next because 
it is a luxury of intelligence (pure mathematics, Greek, 
Latin), and retards the entry into lucrative careers. 

The undergraduates have each two or three rooms in 
a college, and thus form hives. They are obliged to 
attend chapel at eight, dine in hall at five, to be in- 
doors by nine, and in general to attend a tutor's class 
in the morning and a lecture in the afternoon. Breaches 
of rules are noted and punished, especially if repeated. 
To return after nine constitutes a fault ; after midnight 
a grave fault ; to sleep out of college a very grave 
fault. The punishments are, in certain colleges, a fine 



LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY. 139 

of from h8. to £1 ; in others an imposition longer or 
shorter, more frequentlj^ a reprimand fi^om the Head, 
withdrawal of the right of going out, temporary expul- 
sion, and lastly permanent expulsion. This detail is 
important ; for it is seen that here the schoolboy is 
freer and the undergraduate less free than among us. 
The youth, on becoming a young man, does not pass 
from cloistered discipline to complete independence; 
the passage is regulated. At school, as regards many 
of his actions, he has been previously left to himself ; 
at the University he is not wholly left to himself. 
Such a precaution is excellent; against the abuse of 
liberty, the hf.bit of liberty is a moral guaranty, and 
supervision a physical guaranty. Another check : 
Oxford and Cambridge are small places. The young 
man is not, as among us, thrown amidst the tempta- 
tions of a capital, reduced to sedentary and cerebral 
life, without the necessary counterpoise of physical 
exercises, led to seek variety at the theatre, in the cafe 
on the Boulevards, in the excitement of the world, of 
conversation, and of pleasure. There is no debauchery 
at Oxford ; the University officers walk the streets 
after nine, and can enter every tavern or publichouse. 
The libertines go to London or to the neighbouring 
villages ; my friend estimates that the half of the 
undergraduates is pure. The principal failing is the 
taste for wine ; fifty years ago drunkenness prevailed 
here as among the entire upper class ; at present, here, 
as among the entire upper class, it has become rare. A 
last favourable circumstance : the undergraduate, like 
the schoolboy, remains a good Protestant ; he is reli- 
gious, or at least he has a respect for religion. Out of 
an hundred young men whom one of my friends had 
occasion to examine, two only declared themselves free- 



' jo NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

thinkefs ; seventy belonged to tlie Broad Cliurcli, the 
others to the two yarieties called High Church and 
Low Church, the one liking fine ceremonies, pompous 
ritual and approaching Puseyism, the other being alto- 
gether Calvinistical and slightly iconoclastic. 

The studies last about three years ; during the first 
year scarcely anything is done but to resume and repeat 
the lessons learned at school. The first two examina- 
tions are chiefly grammatical and linguistic ; they 
comprise two or three Greek and Latin authors, Greek 
and Latin compositions in prose and verse, some ques- 
tions about the Old and I^ew Testament. The third 
comprises the same subjects, but more carefully studied, 
considered from a new point of view, from the critical, 
historical, and philosophic point of view. Next, the 
undergraduate has the choice between three final ex- 
aminations, the one in mathematics, the other in physical 
and natural sciences, the other in languages, history, 
law, and political economy. An undergraduate who 
has failed enters another college and begins again ; on 
the second failure he generally quits the University. 
There are two sorts of undergraduates. The one aspires 
to honours, which are most useful, and lead to high 
position in the University, in the Church, and else- 
where. The other which, as in France, forms the 
majority, has no other ambition than to obtain a degree; 
its members scarcely do anything but attend the tutor's 
class, never the lectures of the Professors, and restrict 
themselves to the minimum of study. The distin- 
guished men producedby this education are principally 
mathematicians (notably at Cambridge) or classical 
scholars. But for the last ten years the routine is 
modified ; contemporary sciences and modern ideas 
have infiltrated, gained a place. New chairs have been 



LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY. 141 

founded, otlier chairs have widened their teaching. 
See the writings of Stanley, of Jowett, the celebrated 
book styled '' Essays and Reviews ; '' Max Miiller, the 
Sanscrit scholar, lectures here on the history and phi- 
losophy of language. 

All that is but the bark ; the thing it is important to 
know about is always morality, the turn of mind, the 
dominant inclination of man. How do these young 
men live, and what do they love ? In order to reply, 
it would be necessary to reside six months here ; in 
default of personal experience the following pictures of 
manners are said by my friends to be correct : " Pen- 
dennis," by Thackeray; *' Tom Brown at Oxford," and 
a rather lively little romance, illustrated by the author, 
" Adventures of Mr. Yerdant Green." The first point 
is that Oxford and Cambridge being the gathering- 
place for sons of good family, the tone of the place is 
suited to the character and the position of the residents ; 
an English University is in many respects a club of 
young noblemen, or at least of rich men. Many who 
have acquired wealth send their sons there, solely for 
the purpose of their making good acquaintances ; certain 
poor or low-born undergraduates become the toadies of 
their noble comrades, who later on will be able to present 
them with a living. The very usages of the University 
tend to favour this distinction of ranks. In certain 
colleges the noble undergraduates have a separate table, 
a particular dress, divers minor privileges. Imagine, 
if you can, a like system introduced into a great French 
school ! 

At St. Ambrose, the author of "Tom Brown" in- 
stances a class of poor students, a kind of semi-bursars, 
named servitors (who are now abolished), whom their 
lich or noble comrades look down upon. Among us, 



142 



NOTES ON ENGLAND. 



at the Polyteclinic School, the pupils are unaware of 
the bursars' names ; their names are known only to a 
committee pledged by honour to silence ; such is the 
delicacy of the spirit of equality. The author of " Tom 
Brown '' says that " tuft-hunting and the worship 
of money are the most shameful and wide- spread of 
our vices," at Oxford, as well as throughout the rest 
of England. Elsewhere, speaking of his hero, he adds, 
*' his instinct, again, sad to say, was already teaching 
him that poverty is a disgrace to a Briton, and that, 
until you know a man thoroughly, you must always 
seem to assume that he is the owner of unlimited 
ready money.'' One of the personages saj^s, *' If the 
Black Prince were here we would change his motto, 
'Ich dien ' (I serve), into * Je paye' (I pay)." Many 
of these young men have £500 a year and upwards, 
which they regard as pocket-money ; moreover, the 
shopkeepers give them credit. They hold it honourable 
to spend money, to cut a dash ; they keep horses, dogs, 
a boat; they furnish their rooms with elegance and 
richness. "London wine merchants furnished them 
with liqueurs at a guinea a bottle, and wine at five 
guineas a dozen." '* Their cigars cost two guineas a 
pound ; pine-apples, forced fruit, and the most rare 
preserves figured at their wine parties." " They dined 
like gourmets; drove tandems, scattering silver in all 
the taverns of Oxford and the neighbouring roads." 
'' They hunted, rode steeple-chases by day, played 
billiards until the gates closed, and are then ready for 
vingt-et-un, unlimited loo, and hot drink in their own 
rooms, as long as anyone could be got to sit up and play." 
The appointed task scarcely hampers them ; during 
the first year especially it is more than trifling. '* Twelve 
lectures of two hours each weekly upon the Kew Testa- 



LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY. 143 

ment, the first book of Herodotus, the second of Euclid ; 
in addition two hours of work daily ; everything is 
over by mid-day, or at one o'clock at the latest ; there 
is no supplementary exercise in the shape of themes, 
verses, or other exercises. A moderate scholar does not 
require to prepare anything ; he has previously studied 
all that ; he knows beforehand by heart the subject of 
the lecture." Thus the leisure hours are still more 
numerous than among us during the first years of law 
studies. Under such circumstances it is necessary, in 
order to study, to be naturally very studious or very 
ambitious, which it is given only to a very small 
number to be. The others follow their instinct, and 
it is here that the difierence between the English and 
French temperaments is openly exemplified. 

In France the temperament is precocious ; the imagi- 
nation of a collegian, shut up and sealed, during long 
hours of weariness, grows heated ; the dangerous atmo- 
sphere of a great city penetrates to him ; the conversa- 
tion of seniors, our too free literature has done the rest ; 
frequently he has the folly to think that it is honourable 
to be a man before the time. Set h^^ at a stroke, and 
let loose uncontrolled in a capital, he is there exposed to 
the contagion of example, to the conveniences of being 
unknown, and, in all public places, to the temptations 
which are flaunted before him. Besides, in this respect, 
opinion is more indulgent; it speaks, to him onl}^ in 
the name of prudence and good taste ; it only decidedly 
condemns drunkenness, gross debauchery, lasting low 
alliances which may degenerate into marriages ; it 
tolerates escapades. A mother said to me, *' When my 
sons go to Asnieres I know it, but I appear not to bo 
aware of it." Have tact, moderation, foresight ; in 
that, as in everything, the morality of the wor.d pre- 



144 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

scribes nothing more. The young man does not 
know that there is no worse diminution of power, 
that intercourse of this sort abases the heart, that after 
ten years of such a life he will have lost the one-half 
of his will, that his thoughts will have an habitual 
after-taste of bitterness and of sadness, that his inner 
spring will be weakened or broken. He excuses him- 
self in his own eyes by saying that a man must handle 
everything in order to know everything. In fact, he 
learns life ; but very often also he loses energy, the 
warmth of soul, the capacity for acting, and at thirty 
he is merely fit for becoming an official, a provincial, a 
dilettante, or a fundholder. Here, as far as I can 
judge, the human being continues more intact; in the 
first place, because he is subject to discipline, is better 
watched, and less tempted ; next, because written and 
spoken opinion is more severe. It will permit drunken- 
ness, it will not sanction profligacy. A book like the 
" Yie de Boheme,'^ by Henry Murger, would be placed 
beside the old free and easy novels, and regarded as the 
delineation of merry-andrews, perfect scoundrels, and 
half- sharpers. In the three novels I have cited, the 
decency is extreme. A phrase in '^ Tom Brown at 
Oxford " indicates a group of wealthy loose fish, who 
have each a mistress hidden in a village ; but they are 
censured, even by many of their comrades. As regards 
the three heroes, their hearts are smitten, they expe- 
rience calf-love for a milliner ; but they stop short, or 
are stopped in time ; and the loose fish themselves 
admit in principle that the seduction of an innocent 
girl is the act of a scoundrel. 

Two derivatives are the auxiliaries of these maxims. 
The first is the precocity of love and of marriage ; they 
are smitten young, sometimes at twenty, and frequently 



LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY. 145 

they marry a few years afterwards. The second is the 
keen, popular, almost universal taste for bodily exercises. 
In this respect the university is a continuation of the 
school. To play at cricket, row, steer sailing-boats, 
keep dogs, set them upon a band of rats, fish, hunt, 
ride on horseback, drive four-in-hand, swim, spar, 
fence, and, since a recent period, drill as volunteers, 
are for them the most interesting occupations. These 
do not fit in too well with studies ; Plato, a long time 
ago, in his Dialogues, put in opposition the life of the 
athlete and that of the thinker. According to a learned 
foreigner who has much frequented Oxford, if refined 
philology and the lofty philosophical speculations 
are acclimatised here with difficulty, it is because the 
undergraduates eat too much and make too much use 
of their muscles. 

But sport is an excellent vent for the strong and 
superabundant sap of j^outh, and here again, as at 
school, rivalry serves as a spur. Each college has 
its boat, its eight oarsmen and coxswain, all selected 
and exercised with care. Five or six weeks before 
the races, the training begins. To traverse from ten 
to twenty miles of the river every day, dine early on 
stale bread, milk, meat, and very little wine ; to have 
tobacco rationed ; two pints of beer at the most daily ; 
no pastry, no ices ; not to sup late, and to go to bed 
early ; such was the^discipline imposed on Tom Brown. 
During the first days, one is disjointed ; during the 
last, one is dying of thirst; during the race, the 
exertion is so enormous, that one runs the risk of 
breaking a blood-vessel, and on arrival many are 
giddy and cannot speak. All Oxford is there — the 
University and the townsmen. When the boats start, 
an excited crowd follows them, running and crying, 

L 



146 NOTES ON ENGLAND, 

out of breath, leaping ditches, their feet in the water, 
panting along the bank. The description must be 
perused in order to conceive the seriousness and the 
enthusiasm cf the crews. The last minute, that which 
precedes the report of the cannon fired to announce the 
departure, is solemn. " Short minute, indeed ! you 
wouldn't say so if you were in the boat, with your 
heart in your mouth, and trembling all over like a man 
with the palsy. Those sixty seconds before the starting- 
gun in your first race — why, they are a little lifetime. 
.... During the first ten strokes, Tom was in too 
great fear of making a mistake to feel, or hear, or see. 
His whole soul was glued to the back of the man before 
him ; his one thought to keep time, and get his strength 
into the stroke. . . . Isn't he grand, the captain, as 
he comes forward like lightning, stroke after stroke, 
his back flat, his teeth set, his whole frame working 
from the hips with the regularity of a machine." 
Trumpets sound, acclamations continue swelling forth 
like thunder, embroidered handkerchiefs are waved. 
In the evening the victors feast in the great hall of 
the college ; there are speeches, cheers, toasts, choruses 
sung In unison, a gorgeous and glorious hubbub; it 
is clear that such a triumph must be almost as greatly 
desired as the palm of the ancient Olympian Games. 
The interest is greater still when, in the month of 
March, the race takes place on the Thames between the 
crews of the two Universities ; nothing else is talked 
about in London during two days. 

Doubtless muscular culture thus understood leads to 
a certain rudeness of manner. Town and gown fight 
on occasion in the streets. But, as compensation, the 
gymnastic and athletic life has this twofold advantage, 
that it blunts the senses and stills the imagination. 



I 



LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY. 147 

Moreover, when tlie moral and mental life is afterwards 
developed, the mind has for its support a healthier and 
more robust body. The young men who walk about 
here in the odd traditional costume (a short black gown 
and a kind of flat cap) are full of sap and strength, 
have a fine and frank deportment, are muscular and 
strong-limbed, and, in my opinion, have a phsiognomy 
less perturbed, less worn than those of our students. 
During twenty years, a gradual reform has been in 
operation, and many traits in this picture are softened. 
At present, in each college, several Fellows may marry; 
Dissenters and Koman Catholics are admitted to the 
course of study. The passion for boating is rather 
less; the undergraduates of different classes are less 
unequal ; in certain colleges their table expenses are 
supervised and limited. Oxford is gradually ceasing 
to be an aristocratic club, an athletic gymnasium, an 
ecclesiastical and Anglican preserve ; it is on the way 
to become a modern school, a lay and liberal academy. 

At two o'clock there is a ceremony in the great hall 
of the University. The costumes are grotesque, like 
those at the distribution of prizes at our great com- 
petition ; a Latin speech which recalls the antiquated 
forms of the Sorbonne ; a piece of English verse, com- 
posed and read by the student laureate; its subject is 
Sir John Franklin ; the verses are rhetorical phrases. 
Five or six foreigners of distinction receive the honorary 
title of Doctor of Law, injure civill ; this is pronounced 
in ioure ^divdUdi. An Englishman quoting Caesar's 
phrase, Veni^ vidi, vici, and pronouncing it in the same 
fashion, Vendi, vdiddi, vdigdi^ my neighbour replied to 
him, " Csesar could never have pronounced a similar 
phrase." 

In the evening there is a meeting, with experiments 



148 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

and lectures on physical and natural sciences, in a 
museum — a vast building of a somewhat Gothic cha- 
racter, erected by subscription, and still unfinished. 
Bands of ladies walk about there in staring, showy 
attire, many, who are young and in low dresses, wear 
spectacles. But it is certain details only which are 
disagreeable; the whole — town, buildings, landscape 
— is admirable. I had previously traversed the town; 
I wander about there again at the close of the day. 
What a number of colleges, each with its chapel and 
its high surrounding crenellated walls ; these diverse 
and multiplied architectures of every age, in the Gothic 
style, in the Tudor style, in the style of .the seventeenth 
century ; these largo courts, with their statues and 
central fountain of spouting water; these balusters 
which cut the tender azure of the jsky at the summit 
of the edifices; these windows latticed with delicate 
mouldings, or cut into sculptured crosses, after the 
manner of the Revival ; these pulpits in wrought stone ; 
at each turning of the street some lofty conical spire ; 
— what a number of noble forms in a small space ! It 
is a natural museum, in which are accumulated the 
works and the inventions of six centuries. The stone, 
worn, exfoliated, is all the more venerable. One is so 
well-pleased with any olden things ! The more so, that 
here they are only old ; not neglected or half ruined, 
as in Italy, but piously preserved, restored, since their 
foundation, have been always in the hands of rich, 
considerate, and intelligent guardians. Ivy covers the 
walls with its ample drapery; honeysuckle climbs 
around the pillars ; wild flowers plume the tops of all 
the walls ; rich turf, carefully kept, extends its carpet 
up to the arcades of the galleries ; behind the apse of 
a chapel one sees a garden in flower, thousands of 



LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY. 149 

blooming roses. One goes onward. At the extremity 
of tlie town, venerable trees form a walk ; beneath their 
branches two living streams flow along; beyond, the 
eyes rest delightedly on meadows running over with 
plants in bud and flower. It is impossible to imagine 
a vegetation more magnificent, a verdure more opulent 
and yet better tempered by the blended tones which 
the buttercups, the daisies, the wild sorrel, the greyish 
grasses throw over its dazzling tint. The country is 
in all the luxury of its freshness. As the sun slightly 
blinks forth, it smiles with a charming joy ; one might 
liken it to a beautiful timid virgin, happy under the 
veil which is being withdrawn. However, the day closes, 
and indistinct whitenesses ascend above the meadows ; 
under their soft gauze, the river shines with black 
reflections ; all is still, excepting the bells which chime 
melodiously in the chaste tower of Christ Church. 
One would never believe one's self to be at an hundred 
paces from a town. How contemplative and poetical 
is study here ! 

A walk in Magdalen College. I never weary of 
admiring these old edifices festooned with ivy and 
blackened by age, these crenellated clock-towers, these 
mullioned windows ; above all, these vast square courts, 
of which the arcades form a promenade like that of 
the Italian convents. In the afternoon, with the 
exception of one or two passing undergraduates, they 
are solitary ; nothing is sweeter than this architectural 
solitude, poetic, intact, where there is never a trace 
of neglect, of ruin, and of death. Flocks of deer browse 
peacefully beneath the gigantic elms; a long road, 
bordered with the finest trees, winds between two 
rivers. Oxford is in an ancient hollow; hence this 
softness, this freshness, this incomparable opulence of 



150 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

tlie verdure. At Worcester , College an ample sheet 
of water, on which swans fioat, moistens with its slow 
undulations the green sward constellated with flowers. 
On every hand cedars, huge yews, oaks, poplars raise 
aloft their trunks, and expand their foliage; from 
branch to branch honeysuckle, Virginia creepers hang 
and extend. The large gardens of St. John's, the little 
garden of Wadham, are masterpieces of a unique sort, 
beyond art itself, for nature and time have been the 
artificers. Can human art produce anything so beautiful 
as a group of perfect trees three hundred years old ? 

On returning, I recast this judgment in regard 
ing the architecture anew ; it also is three centuries 
old, and seems rooted in the soil by the same right as 
the trees ; the tint of the stone is accommodated to 
the climate ; "age has imparted to it something of the 
maj sty of natural things. One does not feel there the 
mechanical regularity, the ofiicial imprint; each col- 
lege has been developed by itself, each age has built in 
its fashion : here the imposing quadrangle of Christ 
Church, with its turf, its fountains, and its staircases ; 
there, close to the Bodleian library^ a mass of edifices, 
sculptured portals, lofty bell-towers, all flowered and 
embroidered, cupolas circled with small columns. 
Sometimes the chapel is a small cathedral. In several 
colleges the dining-hall, sixty feet in height, vaulted, 
appears the nave of a church. The council - hall, 
wholly lined with antique wood, is worthy of our 
venerable old halls. Imagine the life of a Master of 
Arts, of a Fellow, amid these monuments, beneath 
that Gothic wain.scoting, before the windows of the 
Kevival or of the Middle K^q^ in the midst of severe 
luxury and in the best taste, engravings, copper-plates, 
admirable books. In the evening, when descending the 



LIFE A T THE UNIVERSITY. 151 

stair, when the light flickers upon the large black 
forms, one thinks that one is walking in a true piece 
of scenery. 

Nothing is wanting here, neither the beauties of 
art, nor the freshness of nature, nor the great and 
grandiose impressions of history. A moment since, 
when going through the colleges, I was told the names 
of their ancient occupants, students for ever famous — 
Wycliffe, the Black Prince, Sir Walter Raleigh, Pym, 
Hampden, Archbishop Laud, Ireton, Addison. At 
each building the guide pointed out the dates and 
the authors of the foundation, the embellishments, the 
restorations. All these old men seem living still; for 
their work has survived them and endures. The 
wisdom of ancient times remains written in Latili 
sentences upon the walls ; on a sun-dial, above the 
hours, this solemn phrase may be read — pereimt ct 
imputantur. And this is not a dead city, nor is it asleep ; 
the modern work completes and increases the ancient 
work ; the contemporaries, as in former times, con- 
tribute their buildings and their gifts. When at the 
Bodleian library one has seen the manuscripts, the 
precious volumes, the portraits of Yandyck, Lely, and 
Kneller, one finds further on a recent collection of 
sketches and original drawings by Raffaelle and Michel 
Angelo, where the vitality, the sentiment of nudity, the 
superb Paganism of the Revival, are displayed with in- 
comparable freedom. The collection cost seven thousand 
pounds sterling ; Lord Eldon alone contributed four 
thousand. I have visited two or three professors' 
houses, the ono resembling our old French mansions, 
the others modern and charming, all possessing gar- 
dens, flowers, noble or laughing prospects. The oldest, 
under the portraits of the predecessors, contain every 



152 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

modern comfort. I compared them to tL.ose of our 
scholars, resembling cages, to the third-floor in a great 
city, to the dismal lodgings of the Sorbonne, and I 
thought of the aspect, so gloomy and confined, of our 
College of France. Poor Frenchmen, so poor, and 
who live encamped. We are of yesterday, and ruined 
from father to son by Louis XI Y., by Louis XY., by 
the Revolution, by the Empire. "VYe have demolished, 
everything has required to be rebuilt anew. Here 
the generation following does not break with the pre- 
ceding one ; reforms are superimposed on institutions, 
and the present, based upon the past, perpetuates it. 



XL 



VILLAGES AND FARMHOTJSES. 

OHORT excursions and sojourns at thirty or forty 
^ miles from London. It is necessary to endea- 
vour to see the district, the parish ; one does not com- 
prehend the social net-work till after one has studied 
in detail three or four meshes. Moreover, this time 
again, the courtesy and hospitality of the people are 
perfect. 

Always the same landscapes ; meadows divided by 
hedges, where large trees stand up here and there. 
The country is all verdure ; the eyes are satiated, 
glutted with it ; that is the strongest sensible impression 
which I brought back from England. From the top 
of a great height which we cross is a view, it is said, for 
forty miles in every direction ; nothing but green, no 
forests, some clumps of scattered trees, beetroot, clover, 
hops, fields of peas, bushy parks, hollows in which 
swollen yellow streams meander along, moist meadows, 
wherein heavy cows browse and ruminate. Fresh plants, 
continually removed, multiply and superabound ; hence 
the store of meat, milk. Contrast that with the bread, 
the wine, the vegetables, which form the principal 
nourishment of our peasants ; by this trait, as by many 
others, the Enalishman much more resembles a Dutch- 



154 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

man than a Frenchman. A Paul Potter, a Ruysdael, 
would find here subjects for pictures. Beauty is not 
absent from this curtained sky, full of greyish and 
almost black clouds, which creep over a background of 
motionless vapour. Far off on the horizon the view is 
obscured by a downpour, and all these tints are soft, 
delicately blended, melancholy. 

We skirt deserted, wild commons, where, at in- 
tervals, a horse feeds amid the solitude. This was 
the primitive soil, filled with heaths ; generation after 
generation it has diminished; civilisation, like a rising 
tide, has eaten into it and left fragments only. How 
much labour was required to cover this with herbage 
and vegetables, how much patience and effort to fit it 
for man ! They have succeeded in doing this, and, 
at each century of their history, have converted into 
enclosed meadows thousands of acres of uncertain 
pasturage. It was more beautiful in its first state ; its 
thorny or rude plants, its dull or blackish tints, the 
tone of its flowers better suited the aspect of the sky. 
At present this civilised nature bears too visibly the 
imprint of industry ; it has too many ordered rows ; its 
colours are false or discordant ; the turnip leaves have 
a violet or harsh green ; the light plants shine in the 
sun with a display too dazzling and too slight; one 
feels that their presence has been commanded, and 
that their life is artificial. The country resembles a 
large manufactory of fodder, the vestibule of a dairy or 
a slaughterhouse ; from picturesque ideas, one descends 
to utilitarian ideas. It must be said, however, that the 
latter are equal to the former; after all, man lives on 
chops, and the spectacle of a niggard land transformed 
into a good nurse is still a fine one. 

A walk in the country and in the villages ; every 



VILLAGES AND FARMHOUSES. 155 

two hours there is a shower. This recalls the English 
saying, ** When it does not rain take your umbrella ; 
when it rains do as you please.'' But in the sunshine 
the effect of this humidity is charming ; this grass has 
a delicious freshness and novelty. The drops of run- 
ning water shine like pearls ; beneath a ray of the sun 
a meadow instantly glistens, and its trains of yellow 
and white flowers appear laden with light. However 
the sky continues spotted with vapour ; here and there 
the clouds turn to slate, become violet, blend at a 
quarter of a league. The interchange is perpetual 
between the moist sky and the moist earth, and the 
contrast is curious between the splendid colours of the 
soil and the mixed tones of the air. The eyes follow 
the changing tints and the vague movements of the 
universal exhalation which drags and is torn along 
the hedges like muslin. A feeble breeze inclines and 
balances the foliage of the great trees, and one hears 
the slight noise of the drops which descend upon their 
pyramid. 

Several cottages are very poor, being of clay covered 
with laths, a thatched roof, the rooms are too low and too 
narrow, the windows too small, the partitions too thin. 
Think, of a large family huddled in winter in two of 
these rooms, with clothes drying, the swaddling clothes 
of infants, and the chimney roaring ; during the 
long days of rain and snow, they must live in an un- 
wholesome air, amid their own vapour. Many of the 
mothers have a lean face, marked with pimples, a 
worn-out pinched air ; they have too many children 
and too much toil. The occupant of one of these 
thatched huts is a day-labourer, married, the father 
of six children, who earns twelve shillings a week, 
being generally employed by the year or b}^ the half 



a ' ^ ' 



.1 



IS6 



NOTES ON ENGLAND, 



year ; a cottage like hia costs from three to four 
pounds sterling yearly ; his features are delicate, 
drawn, his physiognomy is sad and humble. I was 
introduced to all these people with consideration and 
courtesy ; they were asked with apologies to permit a 
French gentleman to enter. They instantly consented 
with civility and a pleasant smile. I remarked that I 
have seen in France many thatched huts much worse 
furnished ; whereupon my companion replied that was 
some consolation. The poor day-labourer did not 
appear to be of that opinion. 

However, his little house is clean ; the blue pat- 
terned plates are ranged in good order above a dresser ; 
the fireplace is of iron and is well constructed. I had 
previously seen other cottages elsewhere of this stamp ; 
nearly always, at least in one room, an old carpet 
covers the floor ; often there is a coloured paper, chairs 
of polished wood, small framed engravings, always a 
Bible, sometimes other volumes, religious books, new 
novels, the art of rearing rabbits, &c., in short, more 
useful objects than in our very poor thatched huts. In 
addition, the care taken is greater ; there are no doors 
ojff their hinges, hanging shutters, broken panes, 
stagnant pools, scattered dunghills ; the pavement of 
the soil is well swept, nothing lies about at random. 
Probably confusion and uncleanliness are more un- 
healthy in this climate than in ours, and man is bound 
to be orderly, prudent, regular as in Holland. 

The village contains but four hundred souls ; yet the 
little inn is decent, shining with cleanliness ; one would 
sleep there readily, and one would be comfortable. We 
visit a carpenter, then a carter's ; they are seated at 
table by themselves and take tea with butter. Their 
housss are of brick and covered with red tiles ; one of 



VILLAGES AND FARMHOUSES. 157 

tliem is flanked with a pretty large garden filled with 
vegetables, well cultivated, garnished with fine straw- 
berries, with some bee- hives in a corner ; both of them 
have a small flower-garden, roses, ivy, some creeping 
plants, and adornment. The rooms are rather low, 
but are not wanting in air ; the small panes of glass 
connected by slight triangles of lead allow plenty of 
light to enter ; one goes along a passage of bricks 
carefully washed to enter the outhouse ; the retiring 
place, half open, is as well kept as in a middle-class 
house ; on the first-floor are two bedrooms. Some 
books, the "Whole Duty of Man," one of Murray's 
guides, the family Bible, five or six volumes of history. 
Not a particle of dust on the windows, not a speck of 
mud on the floors, not a hole in the garments. Many 
other persons of the same condition pass along the 
streets, and their clothes are the same ; it is true that 
to-day is Sunday. But, on the whole, my impression 
is that they are better provided and more careful than 
the peasants of France. The glory, the foolish vanity, 
and the superiority of ours consist in possessing laud ; 
they prefer being abstinent, stinting themselves, and 
having their acre in the sun ; in order to acquire it 
they save out of their comfort. But this acquisition 
is a fund ; in case of sickness or scarcity, they have 
a sure resource at hand. On the contrary, here 
every one tells itie that a countryman is as much a 
spendthrift as a workman, as improvident, as exact- 
ing as far as comfort is concerned. Let an accident 
occur, and he instantly becomes a burden upon the 
parish. 

I visit a farmer who cultivates one hundred acres. 
Here the cleanliness is altogether Dutch ; I never 
saw anything superior in the environs of Utrecht 



158 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

and of Amsterdam. The farmer's wife says that 
every year the walls are whitewashed inside, that every 
week the paving stones are washed with a sponge; 
one is ashamed to walk upon them and dirty them. 
Another farmer, who also tills one hundred acres ; 
paj's the landlord £100, and rates and taxes in addi- 
tion ; the same cleanliness and the same condition. 
A third has three hundred acres, and also pays a pound 
an acre : hut this is because his land is bad ; his neigh- 
bour on the other side of the hill pays £800 for four 
hundred acres. The interior is as comfortable aad 
agreeable as that of the largest and the finest farms of 
the department of the Beauce and of the environs of 
Paris. His house is old, with a porch in front forming 
a vestibule ; here and there, in the courtyard, are fine 
pines, ornamental trees ; a pretty green garden borders 
one of the wings ; in the large hall is antique furniture. 
The staircase, of massive wood, and a sideboard date 
from the sixteenth century. An immense fireplace, 
capable of containing an entire trunk, a real yule log, 
with a double wooden screen, which, in summer, closes 
the opening, and, in winter, is a protection from 
draughts. Some pretty good engravings, and a rather 
large number of books, besides the great family Bible. 
The farmer has twelve huge and superb horses, and 
a steam threshing machine ; among his profits, he 
sells eighty fat pigs yearly. A' determined face, 
intelligent, serious, and calm ; he is neither slovenly 
nor boastful; his wife seems an orderly and under- 
standing house-keeper. It would be necessary to 
belong to the country, and live a year here, in order 
to know what there is in these heads. George Eliot, 
in " Adam Bede," has depicted a farmer and his wife, 
who are types in high relief, and minute in detail ; 



VILLAGES AND FARMHOUSES. 159 

my friend tells me that these are excellent in all 
points and strikingly correct. 

We go and see the last farm; six hundred acres, 
about £600 rent ; I was thunderstruck. We were 
shown into a large, fresh, and plain drawing-room ; 
large curtains, supported by gilded poles, two elegant 
and well-framed mirrors, tasteful armchairs ; in the 
middle a table, covered with pretty volumes ; in short, 
the country-house drawing-room of a Parisian who 
has an income of one thousand a-year. Immediately 
adjoining is a sort of hot-house, a glazed conservatory, 
filled with flowers, looking upon the most pleasant 
landscape, on sloping meadows and distant woods. 
The farmer's wife entered ; she is a woman of thirty, 
who looked like twenty-six, in a dress of small-striped 
grey silk, with one or two rings on her fingers, per- 
fectly white hands, pink and cared-for nails, an ad- 
mirable waist, tall and lithe as a Diana, extremely 
beautiful, full of gaiety and vivacity, without any 
embarrassment, and who kept up the conversation very 
well. I learned later that she rode on horseback, 
played on the piano, and is none the less a good house- 
keeper ; she goes to the kitchen every morning, orders, 
superintends, and sometimes makes a little pastry ; 
once, having visitors, and the cook being absent, she set 
to herself, and prepared the dinner. Excepting some 
shades in manners and talk, she is a lady ; she is 
wholly so in heart. M}^ guide praised her greatly, 
but he added that in other cases, which are numerous, 
this education, these tastes, put a person out of humour 
with their condition, that at present many farmers' 
daughters are elegant, profuse, indolent, out of their 
sphere, and unhappy. 

"Since you have begun," B said to me, '''con- 



i6o NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

tinue to tlie end." And, twelve miles from thence, we 
came to a model farm. JSTo large central court ; the 
farm is a mass of fifteen or twenty low brick buildings, 
constructed economically ; as it was intended to furnish 
a model, it would not do to present a costly edifice as 
an example. Oxen, pigs, sheep, each in its stall, well- 
ventilated and well-cleaned ; we were shown a set of 
stables in which the flooring was open ; animals being 
fattened remain there six months, without moving. 
Selected and expensive breeds ; a bull and his progeny 
are Indian, and recall the Buddhist sculptures. Steam 
machines for all the agricultural operations, and a small 
railroad for conveying the food to the animals ; they 
eat sliced turnips, bruised beans, oil-cake; culture, 
thus understood, is a complicated industry, based on 
theory and experience, constantly improved, and worked 
with perfected tools. But I am not competent, and I 
amuse myself with observing the farmer's face, his red 
hair, his clear complexion, veined with scarlet like a 
vine-leaf scorched by the autumn sun, his cold and 
reflecting physiognomy ; in a black hat and black 
riding-coat, upright, in a court, he gives orders in a 
dull tone, with few words, without making a gesture, 
without moving a muscle of his countenance. An 
admirable thing is that the establishment yields a 
return, and the great lord who has founded it in the 
public interest, finds it to his personal profit. I seemed 
to see in the farmer's attitude, in his apparently positive, 
applied, well-balanced mind, the explanation of the 
miracle. 

We returned home, and all around us over the country, 
night fell. The indistinct trees disappeared in a grey 
smoke ; strange yellow tones spread over the meadows, 
the dim air became thicker ; it enveloped even the 



VILLA GES AND FARM LI O USES, 1 6 1 

hedges of tlie road, and bathed everything in its soft 
covering. In this twilight, which resembles a picture 
by Rembrandt, I turned over the things which had 
struck me the most ; in the foreground stand forth the 
children's faces, so fresh, so healthy, so vigorous, so 
chubby, even in the poorest thatched cottages. One of 
them, in its cradle, slept, stretching forth an arm ; the 
little turned-up nose was almost transparent in the 
light ; its mouth seemed a cherry, and the cheeks two 
full roses ; the dimpled flesh yielded under the finger 
which touched it ; the petals of a flower, moistened 
with dew, had not more softness and lustre. To my 
taste this leaves the tj^pes of the south far behind; 
there man, almost from infancy, is made, finished, 
stable, set in a fixed design and in a definitive shape ; 
here one feels, as with Rubens, the continual growth of 
life, its fragility, its delicacy, and, at the same time, its 
sap, the inexhaustible and spontaneous replenishment 
of the human substance. A little boy of four, leaning 
against a wall, astonished, mute, cast down his great 
bashful eyes, held one finger in his mouth, and sufi'ered 
himself to be caressed without uttering a word ; an 
instant afterwards he ventured to raise his eyebrows, 
and gazed upon us as curious animals ; then instantly re- 
penting, covered his cherub face with his two hands. 
One sees the emotions pass over these complexions, as 
one sees the colours change upon their meadows. 

My friends tell me that this village is a good speci- 
men, that the interior of these farmers' and peasants' 
abodes exhibits with sufiicient exactitude the average 
of comfort among the class ; that, however, in 
several districts — for example, on the side of Nor- 
folk and Lincoln — I shall find finer farms. Since then, 
and judging from oflicial documents, I have seen that 

M 



1 62 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

this view was not correct ; the evil is greater, and the 
poor become more and more poverty-stricken. The large 
property increases, and the small one diminishes. At 
the close of the last centmy, Arthur Young wrote : 
** I do not know a single cottage to which a piece of 
land is not attached." Moreover, the poor villagers 
had some fowls, and a pig on the common. But, by 
the Enclosure Acts, the commons are being constantly 
reduced in size ; hence the peasant has no longer the 
resource of fowls and pigs ; having sold his bit of land, he 
can count upon his arms alone, and he lets them for hire. 
In the purely agricultural districts it appears that tho 
wages are from seven to eight shillings a week, and 
not twelve, as I have found them here. To add to this, 
the villager lets for hire the arms of his wife and of his 
children ; one sees bands of them hoeing root-plants, of 
which the culture extends itself unceasingly. Agri- 
culture being conducted on a large scale, and having 
become a scientific form of industry, has had the 
counter-effect of introducing into the country districts 
the rule, the monotony, the miseries of manufacture. 
The children wither, remain ignorant, become vicious ; 
in a district of Lincolnshire, out of four hundred 
cottages, two hundred have but a single room wherein 
the whole family sleep promiscuously. 

I saw one of these days a picture in Punch on this 
head. A landed proprietor takes Mr. Punch into his 
stables, which are admirable. " Yes, Mr. Punch,'' says 
he, "pretty clean stalls — airj^, plenty of light, drainage, 
perfect ventilation, the best water^ and the best pos- 
sible food, good treatment, that is my plan." One 
passes to the cottage. A single chamber, almost bare ; 
three chipped plates on a board ; a bad kettle, two 
pieces of linen drying ; the distress and the stench are 



VILLAGES AND FARMHOUSES, 163 

terrible. A wretched man in rags, with a battered bar, 
warms himself with a gloomy air before a small fire of 
brushwood ; the wife, hollow-eyed, lies with two 
infants on a pallet ; on another pallet are a little girl 
and a little boy ; on a mattress in the corner is a young 
man ; they are all emaciated, wild, and Mr. Punch says 
to the proprietor : ** The arrangement of your stables is 
excellent. Suppose you tried something of the same 
sort here? What think you of that?'* Here the 
disease and the remedy are exhibited together. On 
the contrary, I can venture to say that, among our four 
millions of peasant proprietors, the state of comfort, 
especially during the last twenty j^ears, is increasing ; 
the vice of our organisation is displayed in other ills, on 
the side of politics, by the instability of the Government 
and by the absence of lasting freedom. But each State 
has its hereditary scrofula ; one can onl}^ verifj^ the 
sore, show that it is connected with the organisation, 
appl)' a temporary palliative to some parts ; the great 
surgical operations, which many persons recommend, 
have seldom any other result than that of still more 
reducing the patient. 

After a renewed investigation, it seems to me certain 
that, in this country, the class of agricultural labourers 
having no land of their own to farm is the most un- 
fortunate and the most brutalised. A learned man 
said to me : " As regards intelligence and ideas, the 
distance is as great between them and mechanics as 
between mechanics and men like myself." Two persons 
who have lived in France add that the French peasant 
is much superior; they especially praise his frugal itj'', 
his custom of depending upon himself, his ardour in 
working, his passion for land. According to them, the 
English peasant is quite different, improvident, waste- 



164 



NOTES ON ENGLAND. 



ful, always a burden to the parish or tlie charitable 
ricb. Even were be to possess, like ours, a bit of 
land, be would not know bow to make it yield where- 
withal to live — in the first place for lack of economy, 
because he is heavy, incapable of setting bis wits to 
work ; next, because the English soil, being of very 
mediocre quality, requires much manuring, capital, 
and is suited only for cultivation on a large scale, for 
pasturage, for rearing cattle. According to a clerg}^- 
man, who has lived in Devonshire and in other counties, 
the wages of a villager are from eight to nine shillings 
a week ; sometimes he earns ten shillings ; but he 
requires to be very strong and skilful to earn twelve. 
Now he has often six children besides ; it is impossible 
for eight persons, and even for five or six persons, to 
live upon that sum ; he cannot then dispense with 
public or private help. Besides, a female peasant, and 
in general every woman of the lower class in England, is 
lacking in address; she has not, like a Frenchwoman, the 
talent for keeping house, the spirit of order, the habit 
of bargaining, the art of making a little go along way, 
and of producing something out of nothing ; she does not 
know how to mend and turn a garment, make one dish 
serve ; very often she cannot work. One of our friends, 
a member of the board of guardians in his district, got 
a grant of fifteen shillings a week for a family in which 
there were fourteen children : neither the wife nor tbe 
eldest daughter knew how to make soup, a roast, a dish 
of any sort ; they went to the tradespeople and bought 
new bread, butter, tea, ham, and always at the highest 
prices ; every one in this family could hoe a field, not 
one could cook a chop. Add that, since agriculture 
has been transformed, the tastes of the stomach have 
altered. Fifty years ago, meat was a luxury among the 



VILLAGES AND FARMHOUSES. 165 

peasants ; ttey ate it but once a week ; in winter, they 
liad salt meat only. Now ttiey require fresh meat 
every day ; and England, which produces so much of 
it, is obliged, in addition, to procure it from abroad, 
from Denmark and from Holland; in 1861, there 
entered every week, by the Thames alone, three thou- 
sand head of living cattle. The conclusion of the 
whole matter is, that day labourers in the country live 
partly on alms, and the poor-rates, though they are so 
heavy, and private charity, though it is so liberal 
barely suffice to maintain them. 



XIL 

LANDED PROPRIETORS AND ENGLISH GENTLEMEN. 

T ET US now see the good wliicli is tlie counterpart of 
■^ this evil. I have already made two excursions like 
these to places at forty or fifty miles from London, and 
there, as here, the number of parks is astonishing. 
One never ceases to see them along the road ; in certain 
localities they form a line which continues as far as 
London. In fact, not only are the old estates main- 
tained in virtue of the law which gives the real property 
to the eldest son, but also nearly all the men, who by 
their talent or hj their industry have grown wealthy, 
have an ambition to acquire an estate, to fix their 
family on it, and to enter the local aristocracy. It 
is chiefly in this direction that the hundred millions 
of annual savings, accumulated in England, flow ; they 
serve less to solace the poor than to enrich the rich. 
As compensation, these rich men are natural, bene- 
volent, and recognised chiefs. In the circle of ac- 
quaintances of B , two score families are counted 

as forming the society and leading the locality — a 
marquis, whose park is seven hundred acres, four 
baronets, a lord, and several members of the House of 
Commons. The clergyman with whom I took a walk 
told me that they were " almost fathers of the people." 



LANDED PROPRIETORS. 167 

13 himself is the near relation, the heir, of a great 

lord whose lands he administers ; one day he will have 
an income of £40,000 ; meantime, and for the sake 
of his relative, he supervises, directs, builds healthy 
cottages for the labourers, subscribes to enterprises of 
public utility, and, while improving the property, 
renders a service to the country. 

It would be difficult to find one of these landlords 
who does not give up a portion of his money and of his 
time to the general good. They are municipal magis- 
trates, overseers, justices of the peace, chairmen of 
committees and of useful societies. One of them, 
possessing £1,600,000, and whose brother is equally 
rich, has a share of £40,000 in an undertaking formed 
to bring potable water to London ; there are forty 
shares each of the like amount. As a relaxation from 
Pafliament and from business, he has built a church, 
which we visited, very pretty, in an elaborated Gothic 
style, with stained - glass windows, wainscoting, a 
sculptured pulpit — in short, a little gem, bound in 
evergreen laurels : he has endowed it, and secured an 
income for the chaplain. Immediately adjoining, he 
has founded a free school ; among other things, sing- 
ing is taught there, he has placed a piano in it, little 
concerts are given ; he amuses himself by making the 
children sing. As he believes in the good effect of 
music, he frequently sends the master right and left 
m the district to further its adoption. In another 
village which I passed through, the gentry have hired 
a two-storied cottage, to be used by the villagers 
as a kind of evening club ; out of the fund subscribed, 
the rent, the books, the newspapers, fire, light, and a 
woman to keep the house, are paid for. But it is 
arranged so that this club shall be self-supporting in 



i68 



NOTES ON ENGLAND. 



the end by means of the contributions of its fre- 
quenters. Man is thus made, that he does not ap- 
preciate a pure gift ; it is necessary that he should 
bear a fraction of the expense and co-operate freely for 
his own welfare. In the first room are books and 
newspapers ; in the second one plays at draughts and 
chess, one chats, and one smokes. The aim of the 
founders is to compete with the tavern. They under- 
stand human nature, they know that they must find an 
outlet for instinct, a food for wants. The instinct and 
the wants always satisfy themselves; strive in order 
that their satisfaction should be innocent, and, if pos- 
sible, beneficent. For example, the villagers do not 
work on Sunday ; when it is cold, dirty, and dark, 
they naturally proceed to the place where they find 
fire, light, amusement, and this place, twelve months 
out of the year, is the tavern. Give them a tavern, 
less dear, where, instead of gin, they drink tea ; they 
will thus occupy their leisure hours, and will not 
return home drunk. For the same reason, one of my 
friends in London is a member of the society for secu- 
larising Sunday ; its object is to procure the opening 
of museums, the authorisation of concerts, public lec- 
tures ; thus it is that drunkenness is battled with, and 
more efiicaciously than by sermons. 

To this intelligent beneficence join a quantity of 
respects and attentions. A peer has lent his park for 
the last archery meeting, and presides over the festi- 
val; his little harangue, grave and bantering, his 
respectful gallantry, were excellent for flattering and 
gratifying the ladies. We enter the park of Sir John 

; it is traversed by a public road open to 

pedestrians ; it may be visited without leave. I have 
seen that of the Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim ; 



LANDED PROPRIETORS. 169 

over tlie entrance gate is the following inscription :^ 

" The Duke of Marlborough begs the persons who may 
walk through the park to keep to the high road, and 
not to walk on the grass." The gate of this park is 
open; the first-comer, an inhabitant of the village, 
may go and take the air in it with his wife. Sir W. 

B is master of the hunt in the district, and many 

gentlemen of low position and farmers follow the chase. 
The mistress of the house in which I am staying knows 
all the good women in the locality ; she graciously recog- 
nises them, and shakes hands when she enters their 
cottages with me ; they respond with a cordial and 
even affectionate air ; it is easy to see that there is no 
distrust or hostility betwixt the two classes. The 
inferior is not envious ; it does not enter his head to 
long for the place of the wealthy gentleman ; he is 
rather prone to consider him as his protector, to be 
proud of him, especially if the family be an old one, 
and, for several generations, settled in the locality : in 
that case it has a place, like the £ne trees, among the 
ornaments and the glories of the country. Lately, in 
a railway carriage, I chatted with some of the Life 
Guards, true giants and good fellows ; they said with 
pride, ''all our officers are noblemen." After some 
questions about their pay, which is two shillings daily, 
they said that among them about one -third were 
married men. " Have the widows a claim for pen- 
sions ?^" '* JSTo ; but private subscriptions provide for 
them." All that is the remains of the good feudal 
spirit. The chieftain provided for the wants of his 
vassal, and the vassal was proud of his chieftain. 
^ This spirit is all the more powerful as the popula- 
tion in England is distributed, even at the present 
day, in feudal fashion. Everywhere, in the midst of 



170 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

cottages, are one or more country seats, modern, comely 
houses, which replace the olden castles, and wherein 
the master plays, under new forms, the part of the 
olden baron. In every parish, even the most distant, 
one finds two, three, five, six families who have their 
hereditary seat there, the favourite place of abode, 
and whose patronage is accepted, efficient ; this is the 
ancient patronage of the mailed chieftain, but trans- 
ferred from physical to moral matters, applied to things 
of peace and no more to those of war, exercised by 
intelligence and no more bj the sword, authorised by 
superiority of education and no more by superiority of 
armour. In fact, it is no longer a concern to set men 
in ba4;tle against the enemy, but to diminish ignorance, 
misery, and vice ; for this object as for the other, it is 
necessary to have local chiefs, proved, accepted, capable, 
and these chiefs are the gentlemen proprietors of the 
parish or of the district. Poggio, in his travels, wrote 
three centuries ago, this sentence so full of truths and 
of consequences: "Among the English, the nobles 
think it shameful to sojourn .in cities ; they inhabit 
retired parts of the country among woods and pastures ; 
they consider him the most noble who has the largest 
revenue ; they addict themselves to field afiairs, sell 
their wool and their cattle, and do not consider rural 
profits disgraceful.'' • 

The contrast was great for Poggio between this 
country life of the English nobility and the city life 
of the Italian nobility. It is not less for a French- 
man, and, although among us the Pevolution has sent 
many nobles to their estates, it continues still. The 
town is not in England, as among us, the chosen abode. 
I'ixcopting the great manufacturing cities, the country 
towns, York, for example, are scarcely inhabited by 



LANDED PROPRIETORS. 171 

any one but shopkeepers ; tlie select few and the cream 
of the nation are elsewhere, in the country. London 
itself is but a great gathering place for business ; 
people come there during three or four months in 
summer, to converse and get relaxation, to see their 
friends again, provide for their interests, pass their 
acquaintances in review. But they are rooted in their 
country seats ; that is their true country, the loved 
domestic circle, the family centre, the place where they 
hunt-, where they receive long visits from guests, 
where they act effectively, where they find at each step 
the memorial of their good deeds or of the good deeds 
of their ancestors, where the familiar faces at a street 
corner, the accustomed contours of an eminence at the 
end of a road, leave in the mind the friendly impression 
of being at home. There one takes an interest in 
parish affairs, desires to discharge the minor functions. 
When one obtains them, one exercises them with zeal, 
conscientiously and with pleasure; during the season, 
the Saturday evening train transports from London a 
number of landed proprietors who proceed to a distance 
of forty, eighty, one hundred miles to deliver a lecture, 
hold a meeting, fill the unpaid ofiice of magistrate or 
overseer of the parish or the church. Moreover, they 
are bound to be first in opening their purses, as the 
feudal baron was bound to go first into the fight. 

B says that he gives the tenth of his income in 

subscriptions, and that his neighbours do likewise. 
Count again the poor-rates . which here are three 
shillings in the pound of the estimated territorial 
return, and which in certain districts are seven 
shillings. Yoluntarily, or in accordance with the law, 
the propertied classes lend a shoulder with true courage 
to sustain the heavy burden of public poverty. 



1 72 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

Naturally, such, a circle is closed, and strictly main- 
tains its limits ; tlie aristocratic institution has its 
drawbacks like others. Thackeray, in all his writings, 
has described and bitterly rallied this system of social 
enclosures, the effort of the inferiors to break in, and of 
the superiors to keep them out. For example, a person 
like the elegant and intelligent farmer's wife of whom 
I spoke above is not in society ; she is not invited 

to archery meetings; several ladies whom B- 

mentioned to me, and whose conduct in this respect he 
disapproves, refrain from bowing to her, in order to put 
a stop to the beginning of possible familiarities. Doubt- 
less the English who have lived abroad, and whose 
mind is open, are superior to this miserable pride; 
they frankly acknowledge its folly and excess. But 
beneath much reticence, it is discernible in the others. 
At the bottom of their hearts, and perhaps without 
realising it to themselves, they believe or are tempted 
to believe that a manufacturer, a merchant, a monied 
man, obliged to think all day about gain and the 
details of gain, is not a gentleman, and cannot belong 
to the >vorld of fashion. He has not the requisite 
education, the ideas, the language. "What can a 
tradesman or farmer speak about, except the objects of 
his trade ? " According to them the sentiments lose 
something also ; the monied man and the man of busi- 
ness is inclined to selfishness ; he has not the dis- 
interestedness, the large and generous views which suit 
a chief of the country ; he does not know how to sink 
self, and think of the public. This title alone gives 
the right to rule ; thus, till the contrary be proved, he 
is kept apart, and his family cannot be received among 
the governing families. The latter are at home, and 
it is they who make the first advance in adopting a 



LANDED PROPRIETORS, 173 

newcomer. When a ricli man has bonght an estate, 
it is not necessary that he should trouble himself nor 
inform any one ; if, in mind, in character, and in 
manners, he is a gentleman, this will be known at the 
end of a fortnight, and the neighbouring families will 
of their own accord come and call upon him. But, 
even when adopted, he will not yet enjoy all the privi- 
leges of the others ; he will not succeed in being 
returned to represent them in Parliament ; if he become 
a candidate, the public will say, "He is too little 
known, he does not belong to the county yet." He 
is implanted, but he has not taken root. Perhaps his 
son or his grandson will be elected, but not he. To 
represent a district one must be connected with all 
its interests, its customs, be deeply imbued with 
them for generations through every fibre. The first con- 
dition of acknowledged command is long residence, and 
every strong aristocracy is local. In like manner, 
in France, if, during the Revolution, La Yendee alone 
followed the lead of its gentlemen, it is because, alone 
in France, the gentlemen of La Yendee, country folks 
and sportsmen, lived and remained in intimate inter- 
course with the peasants. 

I endeavour rightly to comprehend the epithet 
so essential, "a gentleman ;" it constantly recurs, and 
comprises a mass of ideas wholly English. The vital 
question in the case of a man is always put thus : " Is 
he a gentleman ?" Similarly in the case of a woman : 
*' Is she a lady?'* In these two cases, one means to 
say that the person in question is of the superior class ; 
this class is recognised in fact ; a workman, a peasant, 
a shopkeeper does not try to step over the line of 
demarcation. But how is it recognised that a person 
belongs to the superior class? In France we haTS 



r^"'M™;' 



I 



I 



174 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

not tlie word because we have not tlie thing, and these 
three syllables, as used across the Channel, summarise 
the history of English society. The gentlemen, the 
squires, the barons, the feudal chieftains have not 
become, as under Louis XY., simply privileged persons, 
ornamental parasites, hurtful in the end, unpopular, 
odious, outlaws, then, badly reinstated, with antiquated 
minds, being henceforth without influence, and main- 
tained in the State rather as a tolerated memorial than 
as an effective moving power. They have continued in 
communication with the people, they have opened their 
ranks to men of talent, they have taken recruits from 
among the cream of the untitled, they have continued 
commanding or directing personages, or at least influen- 
tial in the parish and the State. For that purpose they 
have accommodated themselves to their age and their 
part ; they have been administrators, patrons, promoters 
of reforms, good managers of public aflairs, diligent, in- 
structed, capable men, the most enlightened, the most 
independent, the most useful citizens of the countr3\ 
After this pattern has been formed the idea of a 
gentleman, quite different from that of the French 
gentilhomme. GenUlJiomme awakens ideas of elegance, 
delicacy, tact, exquisite politeness, tender honour, 
cavalier turn, prodigal liberality, brilliant valour ; 
these were the salient traits of the superior class in 
France. In like manner " gentleman " includes the * 
distinctive traits of the superior class in England ; in 
the first place, the most apparent, those which strike 
dull eyes, are, for example, an independent fortune, the 
style of the house, a certain exterior appearance, 
habits of luxury and ease ; very often, in the eyes of 
the common people, especially in the eyes of lackeys, 



LANDED PROPRIETORS. 175 

tliese externals suffice. Add to tliem for more cultivated 
minds, a liberal education, travel, instruction, good 
manners, knowledge of tlie world. But, for real judges, 
the essential part of tlie personage is the heart. When 

speaking to me of a great lord, a diplomatist, B 

said to me, "He is no gentleman." Dr. Arnold, when 
travelling in France, wrote to his friends, " What 
strikes me here is the total absence of gentlemen, and 
of all persons having the education and the senti- 
ments of a real gentleman there are very few 

persons here w^ho have the appearance and manners of 

one A real English Christian gentleman, of 

manly heart, enlightened mind, is more, I think, than 
Guizot or Simondi could be able to comprehend ; no 
other country could, I think, furnish so fine a specimen 
of human nature." Strip off these exaggerations of 
national self-love, instructive testimony will remain. 
For them, a real gentleman is a real noble, a man 
worthy of commanding, upright, disinterested, capable 
of exposing himself and even of sacrificing himself for 
those whom he leads, not only an honourable man, but 
a conscientious man, in whom generous instincts have 
been confirmed by straightforward reflection, and who, 
acting naturally well, acts .still better upon principle. 
In this ideal portrait, you recognise the accomplished 
chief ; add to it the English varieties, empire over self, 
continuous coolness, perseverance in adversitj^; natural 
seriousness, dignity of manner, the shunning of all 
affectation or boasting; you will have the model 
superior who, copied closely or vaguely discerned, 
here rallies all who aspire or who will serve. A 
novelist has depicted him. under the name of " John 
Halifax, Gentleman ;" the subject is a poor abandoned 



176 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

child wlio ends by becoming the respected leader of his 
district. A single phrase will show the tone of the 
book : when, after great misadventures, John attains 
independence, buys a house and keeps his carriage, his 
son exclaims, " Father, we are gentlefolks now I " 
" We always were, my son." 



XIII. 



MANSIONS, PARKS, AND GARDENS. 

T ET US look, however, at the outsides ; they are in- 

-*^ dexes. B , my entertainer, who has been 

married a year, wished to have a cottage. This cottage 
is charming, even elegant, furnished with all the refine- 
ments of neatness, of comfort and luxury, it is of brown 
brick, with several turrets, slanting roof, being nearly 
altogether enveloped in ivy. Around is a little park 
with the velvet lawn rolled daily, two or three superb 
clumps of flowering rhododendrons, ten feet high, 
thirty in length and breadth ; on the grass are garlands 
of exotic flowers of vivid hues, groups of trees well 
arranged, a covered hedgerow forming a lovers' walk 
for a young newly-married pair ; then, beyond the 
hedges, a horizon of large trees and glimpses of views 
over the everlasting verdure. A real nest for a 
married couple : within, pink and white paper-hang- 
ings, light painting, in lilac or light yellow; delicate 
tiled floors and many lozenge-paned windows which 
recall the Middle Ages. In the drawing-room, an excel- 
lent piano, and several fine books which are wedding 
gifts, Tennyson, a Prayer-Book, and others bound 
in blue velvet, in wood with carving, in gilded 
morocco, illustrated with care, with the neatness of 

N 



178 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

pencil which is peculiar to English artists, some orna- 
mented on each page with paintings and coloured 
arabesques. Not an object which does not denote an 
exquisite and even fastidious taste. Everywhere are 
flower-stands filled with rare flowers; without, within, 
flowers abound ; this is the fullest detail of luxurj^ and 
they understand it as those who really delight in it. 

This understanding and this care are manifested in 
everything. There is not an object which fails to 
exhibit forethought and calculated comfort. There are 
carpets and long oilcloths from top to bottom of the 
house : the carpet serves for warmth ; the oilcloth on 
which one treads may be washed and kept as clean as 
a carpet. In my bedroom is a table of rosewood ; 
upon this table a slab of marble, on the marble a round 
straw mat ; all this to bear an ornamented water-bottle 
covered with a tumbler. One does not simply place 
one's book upon the table ; upon the table is a small 
stand for holding it. One does not have a plain can- 
dlestick, which one blows out before going to sleep ; the 
candle is enclosed in a glass cylinder, and is furnished 
with a eelf-acting extinguisher. Other details are 
still more striking ; a moment's reflection is required 
in order to comprehend their use. Sometimes all 
this apparatus hampers ; it involves too much trou- 
ble for the sake of comfort. In like manner, on a 
journey, I have seen Englishmen supplied with so 
many glasses, opera- glasses and telescopes ; w4th so 
many umbrellas, canes, and iron-tipped sticks ; with so 
many overcoats, comforters, waterproofs, and wrappers ; 
with so many dressing-cases, flasks, books, and news- 
papers, that were I in their place I should have stayed 
at home. From England to France, and from France 
to Italy, wants and preparations go on diminishing. 



MANSIONS, PARKS, AND GARDENS, ly^ 

Life is more simple, and, if I may say so, more naked, 
more given up to chance, less encumbered with, incom- 
modious commodities. 

Fifteen hundred pounds of income, three to four 
horses, two carriages, six servants, a gardener. The 
same style of living would require nearly the same 
outlay in France. 

We have visited five or six parks, large or of the 
average size, nearly all are beautiful, two or three being 
admirable. The intact and well-kept meadows sparkle 
in the sun, abounding with daisies and buttercups. 
The oaks are old, often enormous. At the bottom of 
the valleys, rivulets, properly disposed, form little lakes 
in which swim foreign ducks ; here and there, in a zone 
of glittering water, an islet covered with rhododen- 
drons rears its pink tuft Along the woods rabbits 
speed ofi" beneath our feet, and at each winding of the 
road the undulating plain, strewn with clumps of trees, 
sets forth its verdure varied, mellowed, as far as the blue 
distances. What freshness and what silence ! One 
feels in a state of repose ; this nature welcomes one with 
a tender, discreet, intimate caress ; she is some one ; she 
has her accent, the affectionate accent of domestic hap- 
piness, like a beautiful bride, who has adorned herself 
for her husband, and advances in front of him with a 
soft smile. Every original work — a garden, like a 
book or a building — is a secret which unveils deep- 
seated sentiments. In my opinion this one, more 
than any other, shows the poetic dream of an English 
soul. It is not so with their dwellings — huge ma- 
chines, partly Italian or partly Gothic, without distinc- 
tive character. One sees that they are spacious, com- 
fortable, well-kept — nothing more. These are the 
houses of the rich, who understand comforts, and who, 



i8o 



NOTES ON ENGLAND. 



sometimes rather unfortunately, have had architectural 
fancies ; many elegant cottages, covered and encum- 
bered with turrets, seem playthings in glazed paste- 
board. All their imagination, all their national and 
personal invention, have been expended upon their 
parks. 

This one of seven hundred acres contains trees which 
two or three men could not encircle with their outspread 
arms — oaks, limes, plane-trees, cypresses, beeches, 
which have freely developed the amplitude and fulness 
of their forms. Isolated or in groups upon the mellow 
and rich meadow, their rich pyramids, their vast 
domes expand at will, and descend to the grass with a 
largeness of expansion such as cannot be imagined. 
They have been tended like rich children ; they have 
always enjoyed perfect liberty and perfect satisfaction ; 
nothing has lessened their luxuriance or hampered 
their growth ; they respire the air j^nd use the soil 
like great lords to which the soil and the air belong by 
right. In the centre of so many living emeralds is a 
still more precious jewel — the garden. Clumps of 
rhododendrons twenty feet high there display them- 
selves, with all their flowers in bloom ; their petals, 
which are red or of pale violet, shine softly in the 
sun, beneath the humming hosts of bees. Bushes of 
azaleas, tufts of full-blown roses, beds of flowers with 
pearl, azure, velvet, or flesh tints, dainty and winding 
borders form indistinguishable circles — one walks 
environed with perfumes and colours. Wise art has 
regulated the succession of the plants in such a way 
that those which bloom late replace those which bloom 
early, and that, from one end of the season to the other, 
the vast flower-bed is always blooming. At intervals 
a sycamore of noble port, a foreign beech of copper- 



MANSIONS, PARKS, AND GARDENS, i8i 

coloured foliage, sustain with their grave note or with 
their sudden resonance this too-long-drawn-out concert 
of delicious impressions. Yerily this is a concert for 
the eye, and like a magnificent and full-toned sym- 
phony, which the sun, that powerful leader of the 
orchestra, causes to swell in unison beneath the stroke 
of his bow. As far as the distant places of the park, 
farther off still, in the woods, on the common, one 
feels them near at hand. Beautiful plants have 
climbed over the walls, and suddenly, amidst wild firs, 
one meets with a pink and smiling rhododendron, like 
an Angelica of Ariosto in the midst of the forest of the 
Ardennes. All these distances are agreeable ; the land 
rises and falls under a thick covering of brushwood ; 
here and there ferns, with their vivid and charming 
green, relieve the uniformity of their tint ; in several 
places ferns abound, and one sees them meandering, 
twisting about, marking rose- windows on the large 
russet carpet. At the extremity a line of pines bounds 
the horizon, and the undulations of the ground are 
developed by insensible stages in the pale warmish 
mist, transpierced with light. 

The house is a large mansion, rather commonplace, 
solid in appearance, arranged in modern style ; the 
furniture of the ground floor and of the first floor, 
recently renewed, cost four thousand pounds. Three 
rooms or drawing-rooms, sixty feet long, twenty high, 
are furnished with large mirrors, good pictures, excel- 
lent engravings, with bookcases. In front is a glazed 
conservatory, where one passes the afternoon when the 
weather is bad, and where, even in winter, one can 
fancy that it is spring. Bedrooms for the young 
ladies who come as visitors ; fresh, clear, virginal, 
papered in blue and white, with an assortment of pretty 



1 82 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

feminine objects and fine engravings, they are well 
fitted for their amiable occupants. As for the rest, the 
picturesque sentiment of decoration and of the arrange- 
ment of the whole is less keen than among us ; for 
example, the objects and the tones are rather placed in 
juxtaposition than in accord. But there is grandiosity 
and simplicity ; no fondness for crowding and for old 
curiosities. They readily submit to large bare plane 
surfaces, empty spaces ; the eye is at ease, one breathes 
freely, one can walk about, one has no fear of knocking 
against the furniture. Attention is given to comfort, 
notably to what relates to the details of sleeping and 
dressing. In my bedroom, the entire floor is carpeted, 
a strip of oilcloth is in front of the washing-stand, 
matting along the walls. There are two dressing- 
tables, each having two drawers, the first is provided 
with a swing looking-glass, the second is furnished 
with one large jug, one small one, a medium one for 
hot water, two porcelain basins, a dish for tooth- 
brushes, two soap-dishes, a water-bottle with its 
tumbler, a finger-glass with its glass. Underneath is 
a very low table, a sponge, another basin, a large 
shallow zinc bath for morning bathing. In a cup- 
board is a towel-horse with four tov/els of difi'erent 
kinds, one of them thick and rough. Another indis- 
pensable cabinet in the room is a marvel. JSTapkins 
are under all the vessels and utensils ; to provide for 
such a service, when the house is occupied, it is 
necessary that washing should be always going on. 
Three pairs of candles, one of them fixed in a small 
portable table. Wax-matches, paper spills in pretty 
little holders, pin-cushions, porcelain extinguishers, 
metal extinguishers. Whiteness, perfection, softest 
tissues in every part of the bed. The servant comes 



MANSIONS, PARKS, AND GARDENS. 183 

four times a day into the room ; in the morning to 
draw the blinds and the curtains, open the inner blinds, 
carry off the boots and clothes, bring a large can of hot 
water with a fluffy towel on which to place the feet ; 
at midday, and at seven in the evening, to bring water 
and the rest, in order that the visitor may wash before 
luncheon and dinner ; at night to shut the window, 
arrange the bed, get the bath ready, renew the linen ; 
all this with silence, gravity, and respect. Pardon 
these trifling details; but they must be handled in 
order to figure to oneself the wants of an Englishman 
in the direction of his luxury; what he expends in 
being waited upon and comfort is enormous, and one 
may laughingly say that he spends the fifth of his life 
in his tub. 

Several of these mansions are historical ; they must 
be seen in order to understand what inheritance in a 
large family can bring together in the form of treasures. 
One was mentioned to me where, by a clause in the 
conditions, the possessor is bound to invest every year 
several thousand sterling in silver plate ; after having 
crowded the sideboards, in the end, a staircase was made 
of massive silver. We had the opportunity of seeing 
in the retrospective exhibition an entire collection of 
precious curiosities and works of art sent by Lord 
Hereford. In 1848, he said to one of his French 
friends, greatly disquieted and a little put out, " I have 
a mansion in Wales which I have never seen, but 
which I am told is very fine. Every day dinner for 
twelve is served there, and the carriage drawn up at 
the door in case I should arrive. The butler eats the 
dinner. Go thither, make yourself at home ; you see 
that it will not cost you a farthing." Naturally, fine 
things accumulate in these wealthy hands. Baroness 



1 84 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

Buidett Coutts, Lord Ellesmere, the Marquis of West- 
minster possess picture-galleries which would do honour 
to a minor State. Lord Ellesmere has in three rooms, as 
lofty as the gallery of the Louvre, a number of Pous- 
sins, the best Flemish painters, above all three Titians 
of medium size, *' Diana and Acteon," *' Diana and 
Calypso," "Yenus leaving the Waters," of a warm 
amber colour, of the richest and most lively beauty. 
The Marquis of Westminster has, in two galleries and 
four enormous rooms, an hundred and eighty-three 
pictures, with an accompaniment of busts, statues, 
bronzes, enamels, malachite vases, six large Rubens^ 
three Titians, one E-aiiaelle, two Rembrandts, a number 
of Claudes, chosen from among the finest. These 
palatial mansions are but samples, and it would require 
too much space to mention them all. In another tour, 
I saw Blenheim Palace, near Woodstock, belonging to 
the Duke of Marlborough. This is a sort of Louvre, 
formerly presented by the nation to the great captain, 
built in the style of the period, much ornamented. 
Several rooms are as lofty as the nave of a church, the 
library is an hundred feet long, an inner chapel contains 
the monument of the founder, one gallery displays the 
family portraits, another contains porcelain, several 
others paintings. The park is two miles in circumfer- 
ence, magnificent trees, a large stream of water, crossed 
by an ornamental bridge, a column bearing the statue 
of the first duke, a private cabinet containing, under 
Titian's name, twelve copies, being the loves of the gods, 
voluptuous figures of life-size, presented by the princes 
of Italy to the conqueror of Louis XIY. ; in the apart- 
ments are works by Reynolds, five or six large por- 
traits by Yandyck, a Madonna by Raffaelle, two 
Bubens, where sensuality, passion, audacity, genius, 



MANSIONS, PARKS, AND GARDENS, 185 

overflow like a river in splendours and enormities. 
Two are bacchanals ; one gigantic female fawn is lying 
on the ground, curved upon her pendent breasts, and 
her two little ones, turned on their backs, fastened to 
the udder, suck eagerly in a mass of quivering flesh 
above ; the torso of a dark Silenus forms a contrast to 
the dazzling whiteness of a wanton and twining 
nymph ; close by, another copper-coloured, huge 
Silenus, heartily dances, with a drunken laugh which 
shakes his paunch, whilst a beautiful ^oung woman, 
bent upon the hip, sets forth the soft undulations of her 
side and throat. I dare not describe the third picture, 
the most pungent of all, of a sublime crudity, all the 
sap and all the flower of an indomitable temperameiit, 
all the poetry of abandoned wickedness, and of bestial 
gourmandising, " Lot and his two Daughters." But I 
have forgotten myself, these memories return upon me 
like a hot gust. All that I wish to say in conclusion 
is, that these large hereditary fortunes are conservatories 
prepared to be stocked with all fine things. At the 
end of several generations a mansion, a park become 
a jewel case. 

Several consequences flow from this, some, which are 
evil, afiect the individual ; others, which are good, 
concern the State. 

According to S , who is cosmopolitan and well 

connected here, the law of primogeniture, especially in 
the case of noblemen, has many unpleasant results. 
Very often the eldest son, having his head turned from 
his college days with servility and flattery, is a foolish 
spendthrift or lunatic ; he travels without learning 
anything, brings back with him the worst of Conti- 
nental customs, or wearies. If the aristocracy were not 



i86 



NOTES ON ENGLAND. 



recruited by men of talent among commoners, its mem- 
bers would soon become useless, narrow-minded, and 
even pernicious, as frequently happens elsewhere. More- 
over, the inequality of the children leads to bitter 
contrasts. Here I speak less of noblemen who can 
procure the advancement of their younger sons in the 
army, the Church, or the administration, than of the 
simply rich men; in these families the younger son 
bitterly experiences the constraint which casts him 
naked or supplied with a trifling patrimony among the 
chances and the battles of life, which sends him abroad, 
postpones his marriage, condemns him during ten or 
twenty years to subordination, striving, to privations, 
whilst his brother, independent and rich from birth, 
has but to occupy the mansion and park prepared for 
him. However, this notion distresses him less than 
we should imagine ; he is accustomed to it from child- 
hood ; as the usage is old, legal, and national, he 
submits to it, and even accepts it on the same footing 
as a natural necessity. Besides, by temperament, he 
does not dread hardship, and pride whispers to him 
that it is best to shift for himself by working. 

That being admitted, let us trace the advantages. 
An Englishman has nearly always many children, the 
rich as well as the poor. The Queen has nine, and sets 
the example. Let us run over the families we are ac- 
quainted with : Lord has six children ; the Marquis 

of , twelve ; Sir W , nine ; Mr. S , a judge, 

twenty-four, of whom twenty-two are living ; several 
clergymen five, six, and up to ten and twelve ; a certain 
Church dignitary has only four sons, but he expends 
in keeping up his position and in charities his two 
thousand pounds of salary. The Bishops, many of the 
high oSicials or landed proprietors, act likewise. In 



MANSIONS, PARKS, AND GARDENS, 187 

general one saves little here ; a medical man, a lawyer, 
a landlord has too many public or private claims upon 
him, taxes, subscriptions, the education and travels 
of his children, hospitality, horses, servants, comforts. 
One knows not how to keep within bounds, one wishes 
to have every enjoyment, to make a figure; one prefers 
to add to the task rather than diminish the style of 
living ; in place of retrenching, one scatters abroad ; 
at the close of the year the utmost is to make both ends 
meet. Too much toil and too great outlay, that is 
admitted by my English friends to be the English 
shortcoming. Now consider these younger sons, well 
brought up, well trained by a general education and by 
a special education, informed from their earliest years 
that they must count upon themselves ; accustomed to 
comfort, followed by the memory of the paternal 
country-seat ; can there be a sharper spur ? They have 
a stimulus to work. Not to reascend to their father's 
position is to fall lower ; they feel bound to rival the 
fortune of their eldest brother. In this fashion the 
law of primogeniture, combined with the experience of 
what is comfortable, is a system of emulation ; they rush 
to the Indies, to China, to Australia, take the cream oif 
the world, and return to found a family. In London there 
is a quarter called the Australian, inhabited by people 
who have made fortunes in Yictoria, in Melbourne. 
The weak succumb under this system ; but the spirit of 
enterprise, initiative, energy, all the forces of human 
nature are brought into full play. The individual 
is braced by the struggle, the select few of the 
nation is renewed, and gold flows in torrents over the 
country. 

Another advantage, but which appears to be one only 
in the eyes of a philosopher and of an artist ; however, 



1 88 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

it is an advantage. Without an aristocracy, a civili- 
sation is not complete ; it wants large, independent 
lives, emancipated from all mean care, capable of 
beauty like a work of art. Some one has said, *' War 
to castles, peace to cottages." I think it would be 
better to say, "Peace to cottages and to castles.'* 
Proudhon wished to see France covered with neat 
little houses, in each house a half-country half-city 
family, and round about a small field and a garden, the 
whole soil being thus parcelled out. From the his- 
torian's point of view, this is the desire of a market- 
gardener; if there were nothing else in it than vegetables, 
the country would be very ugly. I have no park, and 
yet my eyes are satisfied with beholding one — only 
it must be accessible and well-kept. It is the same 
with the lives of the great ; they perform the functions 
of parks among the garden plots and tilled fields. 
The one furnishes venerable trees, velvet greenswards, 
the delicious fairy-land of accumulated flowers and 
poetic avenues ; the other maintains certain elegancies 
of manners and certain shades of sentiments, renders 
possible a cosmopolite education, supplies a hotbed for 
statesmen. One of the first manufacturers in England, 
a Radical and supporter of Mr. Bright, said to me, with 
regard to electoral reform, " We do not wish to over- 
throw the aristocracy ; we consent to their keeping the 
government and the high ofiices. As members of the 
middle class we believe that specially-trained men are 
required for the conduct of afiairs — trained from 
father to son for this end, occupying an independent 
and commanding station. Besides, their title and their 
genealogy are a gilt feather ; a troop is more easily led 
when its officer wears a plumed hat. But we absolutely 
require that they should fill all the places with compe- 



MANSIONS, PARKS, AND GARDENS, 189 

tent men. Nothing for mediocrities ; no nepotism. Let 
them govern, provided, however, that they have talent." 
They have profited by their recent experience. They 
know that during the Crimean campaign the flood of 
public anger nearly swept them away. They have felt 
that they must emerge from negligence and disorder ; 
they have yielded to opinion, they have ended by 
directing reforms. It may be affirmed that during 
thirty years they have governed, not in the interest of 
their class, but in the interest of the nation. Since 
1832 they have ceased to prey upon the public funds ; 
they are rich or well-to-do persons, who pay the heavier 
share of the taxes; the principal transformations of 
the Budget have had the effect of relieving the people. 
On the whole, England is becoming a Republic, for 
which the aristocratic institution fabricates the required 
contingent of ministers, representatives, generals, and 
diplomatists, as a polytechnic school furnishes the 
indispensable quota of engineers. Many are incompe- 
tent ; let them remain out of service, and let them 
occupy themselves in spending their income. But the 
necessary staff may be picked out of the mass ; and 
nothing is more precious than a good staff. 



xiy. 

CHARACTER AND POSITION OF THE CLERGY. 

A LONGSIDE of him who conducts aiFairs, there is 
-^-^ another who governs consciences, instituted on 
the same principle, and leading to the same result — I 
mean to say the governance exercised by the most 
worthy, respected, stable, and perfectible. This refers 
to the clergy ; in the first place, however, let us see 
the sentiments which support them. 

It is Sunday ; the domestics are excused waiting at 
table ; each guest helps himself ; the Sabbath day is 
respected as much as possible. These biblical traits 
are encountered at every step ; for example, newspapers 
do not appear on Sundays ; one train excepted, the 
railway traffic ceases ; in Scotland, the Duchess of 

, who was going to see her dying mother, could 

not get the special traiii on Sunday, for which she 
would have paid. 

We go to church for afternoon service ; the parson, 
a tall, thin man of forty, takes as his text the life of 
St. John the Baptist in the New Testament, briefly 
narrates this story, and extracts the fitting applications 
from it with good sense and calmness. Good pro- 
nunciation, gravity, no emphasis ; solid and clear argu- 
ment, developed in a serious tone, is always useful teach- 



THE CLERGY. 191 

ing for the public, especially for tlie village public. 
Before, and after, lie reads the service, and the small 
congregation sings the psalms, accompanied by Ihe 
organ. Excellent behaviour and general attention. 
The music is a grave recitative, rather monotonous, 
but never clamorous or bellowing, like our church 
singing. This liturgy, those psalms, translated or 
arranged from the Hebrew, are truly eloquent, elevated, 
imposing ; the Hebraic style, with its abruptness and 
sublimity, runs well in English. It has been softened, 
rendered lucid in the translation ; but the English 
tongue, among all others, is the most capable of sus- 
taining its grandeur and of adapting itself to its jerks ; 
for it can express concentrated and powerful emotions, 
impassioned and profound veneration. For example, the 
words *' Mon Dieu '* are inexpressive and almost devoid 
of accent in French ; the same English words, "My God," 
are an intense cry, or sigh of aspiration and of solemn 
anguish. The more I read the " Book of Common 
Prayer," the more beautiful and appropriate to its pur- 
pose do I find it. Whatever be the religion of a country, 
church is the place to which men come, after six days 
of mechanical toil, to freshen in themselves the senti- 
ment of the ideal. Such was the Grecian temple under 
Cymon ; such the Gothic cathedral under St. Louis. 
In accordance with the differences of sentiment, the 
ceremony and the edifice differ ; but the important 
point is, that the sentiment should be revived and forti- 
fied. Now, in my opinion, that occurs here ; a day 
labourer, a mason, a seamstress who leave this service 
carry with them noble impressions, suited to the 
instincts of their race, a vague notion of an august, I 
know not what, of a superior order, of invisible justice. 
Moreover, a cultivated man can seat himself boside 



192 



NOTES ON ENGLAND. 



tliem ; lie is not repelled by too base superstitions. Nc 
petty decoration s, painted images, childish parade, postur- 
ings, set marches, and antiquated ceremonies, whereoi 
the congregation have forgotten the meaning. Th< 
walls are nearly bare ; the hymns and words are in the^ 
vulgar tongue ; the officiating clergyman does not make 
genuflexions ; his bearing is that of a magistrate ; except 
the surplice, he has the garb of one, and, according to 
the saying of Joseph de Maistre, he may be defined as 
a gentleman charged with holding forth worthy dis- 
courses to you. The ceremony is a moral gathering, 
where the chairman speaks in a pulpit, in place of 
speaking from a platform. Besides, in his discourses 
as in his worship, dogma is always put in the back- 
ground ; before everything else, the art and will to live 
rightly are considered. Religion itself, with its emotions 
and its great vistas, is scarcel}^ anything but the poetry, 
and the far beyond, of morality ; the prolongation into 
the infinite of a luminous and sublime idea — that of 
justice. A reflecting mind can accept the whole, at least 
in guise of symbol. In this fashion, and without re- 
nouncing his personal interpretation, he remains in com- 
munication and in communion with the simple who are 
near him. On the fundamental point, which is the 
moral emotion, all are agreed, and, in consequence, all 
reunite to surround with assiduous respect, visible and 
unanimous, the Church and the pastor. 

Thus he possesses authority. Note, moreover, that he 
is a gentleman, frequently by his birth and by his for- 
tune, nearly always by his education. The Bishop of 
London has £10,000 a year; one of the two Archbishops, 
£15,000 ; a certain dignitary of Cambridge, £7,000 ; 
the Dean of St. Paul's, £2,000 ; that of Westminster, 
£3,000. Literature and science are passports to these 



THE- CLERGY. 193 

higli offices ; one attains a bishopric througli Greek ; 
as was tlie case of Dr. Thirl wall, author of a very 
good history of Greece. The average of all the salaries 
put together and divided by the number of incumbents 
is £140 ; generally a cure or living is worth £200 or 
£300 a year, the smallest are £80 ; one is said to be 
worth £10,000. The Lord Chancellor has seven 
hundred in his gift, the others are in the gift of pri- 
vate persons, inheritors or founders. In addition, and 
not unfrequently, the incumbents have fortunes of 
their own. Several good families have a son in holy 
orders; he brings with him his share in the estate, 
sometimes a large income, or the fortune of his wife ; 
many pious and well-born girls like to marry a clergy- 
man. In fine, the ecclesiastical profession is a career 
very similar to that of the magistracy among us, com- 
prising marriage, a serious life, moral pre-occupations, 
select education, elevated sentiments, but not an ascetic 
system, a solitary hearth, and passive obedience. 

The majority have been at Oxford or Cambridge ; 
those of my acquaintance all read French, and pos- 
sess a solid foundation of appropriate study, Greek, 
Latin, mathematics, general instruction. They have 
read Shakespeare and Tennyson ; they are not unac- 
quainted with the diflPerent points of view of interpre- 
tation, with the history of this Church. One of them 
gave me particulars about the successive versions of the 
Prayer-Book, and said that it would have been better 
to have retained the first. Another was tolerant in 
the matter of Dissenters, and only blamed the haughty 
disposition which leads each to form a doctrine for 
himself. On this subject, witness the tone of their 
orthodox reviews : it is firm, but not violent. An 
entire fraction of the Church holds broad views. 



!94 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

Liberals, like Milman, independent investigators, bold 
commentators, like Stanley, have been tbougbt worthy 
of the highest posts. Deans in the capital. All that 
denotes a rather lofty average of education and spirit, 
very lofty, if we compare it with the corresponding 
grade in France. As to their manners and externals, 
they are those of a gentleman, of a gentleman of inde- 
pendent means, if the living be large enough, or if the 
incumbent have private fortune ; besides, a wife always 
imparts comfort and enjoyment to the house which she 
manages. Many of them keep horses, a carriage, 
several servants. In the case of one, his cottage, the 
small park, the style of the house, were as well looked 

after as in that of Mr. B , my entertainer. In that 

of a second, six miles from this place, the style is not 
inferior. I know not whether it be accidental or not, 
but it has never seemed to me that they are prudish 
in their tone or their manners. Lately, at Venice, I 
dined at table with a gentleman, his four daughters, 
and his wife ; he was not serious, like most English- 
men ; on the third day he told me he was a clergyman, 
and we went to the theatre together to see Mary Stuart. 
Thus by their ideas, their conduct, their education, 
their manners, sometimes too by their fortune and their 
birth, they can mingle with the local aristocracy. They 
are not peasants with the rust badly rubbed off at col- 
lege, fed upon antiquated theology, set apart from the 
world by their profession, their celibacy, their defi- 
ciency in experience, but are relatives, equals, men of 
the same sphere. The clergyman at table alongside the 
landlord is the director of morals, alongside of the poli- 
tical leader, both of them allied together, are visibly the^^ 
fcuperiors of those they lead, being accepted by them as 
such, and are generally worthy of being so accepted. 



THE CLERGY. 105 

When I walk to tlie village with, the clergyman, lie 
enters the houses, pats the little ones on the head, gets 
information about their progress, admonishes the bad 
boys, speaks against drunkenness, chats with the people 
about their concerns ; he is their natural counsellor. 
Ilis wife teaches the poor children ; the indigents come 
to the parsonage to seek help, a bottle of good wine, 
some delicacies for a sick person. Another clergyman 
whom I knew in London, recently took the ragged- 
school children into the country. There were two 
thousand of them ; it was at once a festival and an 
autumn procession, with flags, music, &c. They re- 
mained away from seven in the morning till the even- 
ing ; they ate and drank ; the cost of the whole was 
about two hundred pounds, supplied by voluntary con- 
tributions. The object was to give a day's pleasure in 
the open air to these poor little ones who dwell in dirty 
holes or on the pavement. Spiritual guides and tem- 
poral guides ; on both sides the superior class fulfils its 
task ; and in local life as in general life, its ascendency 
is merited and undisputed. 



xy. 



THE GOVERNING CLASSES AND THE GOVERNMENT. 



Y} ETUElSr to London : I have vainly striven to pro- 
■^^ cure precise information, some figures about the 
fortunes and number of the persons who compose this 
disseminated and local aristocracy. In 1841, accord- 
ing to Porter, in England and Wales there were 
123,000 males and 322,000 females enjoying an inde- 
pendent fortune, the population was 16,000,000 ; now, 
in 1861, it is 20,000,000, and wealth has largely in- 
creased. In 1849, the number of persons keeping 
riding and carriage horses was 140,000, of whom the 
half kept two horses and upwards. In 1841 the num- 
ber of persons having male servants was 120,000, of 
whom the half had two men servants and upwards. 
Now, my friends tell me, that to keep a horse and a 
man servant denotes an outlay of £800 to £1,000 a 
year. I suppose that, in accordance with these figures, 
the number of rich or well-to-do families of the 
country may be estimated at about one hundred and 
twenty thousand. 

Observe the supports of such a constitution ; it is 
based on the number, the distribution, the fortune, the 
antiquity, the capacity, the residence, the probity, the 
utility, the authority of the entire upper class, one 



THE GOVERNMENT. icj-] 

hundred thousand families. All the rest is secondary. 
For eighty years our publicists have reasoned them- 
selves blind concerning constitutions ; I know one 
among the most eminent who would transport that of 
England or the United States to France, and asks two 
years only for rendering the nation accustomed to it. 
One of them said to me, " It is the locomotive ; it is 
enough to bring it across the water, and instantly it 
will replace the diligence." In fact, nearly all Europe 
has essayed or adopted the English system — monarchy 
more or less tempered. Lower House and Upper House, 
elections, &c. Consider how grotesque the result 
has been in Greece, lamentable in Spain, fragile in 
France, uncertain in Austria and in Italy, insufficient 
in Prussia and in Germany, successful in Holland, in 
Belgium, and in the Scandinavian States. To import the 
locomotive is not everything : to make it run, a line is 
requisite. Or, rather, one ought to put aside all com- 
parisons drawn from mechanical things; the constitu- 
tion of a State is an organic thing like that of a living 
body, it pertains to the State alone ; another cannot 
assimilate it, the outside merely can be copied. Under- 
neath institutions, charters, written laws, the official 
almanack, there are the ideas, the customs, the character, 
the condition of classes, their respective position, their 
reciprocal sentiments ; in short, a ramified network of 
deep-seated, invisible roots beneath the visible trunk 
and foliage. It is they which feed and sustain the 
tree. Plant the tree without roots, it will languish, 
and will fall at the first gust. We admire the stability 
of the English Government ; this is due to its being the 
extremity and natural unfolding of an infinity of living 
fibres rooted in the soil over all the surface of the 
country. Suppose a riot like that of Lord Gordon's, 



igS NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

but better conducted and fortified by socialistic proclama- 
tions ; add to this, what is contrary to all probabilit}^, a 
gunpowder plot, the total and sudden destruction of the 
two Houses and of the Royal Family. Only the peak 
of the Government would be carried off, the rest would 
remain intact. In each parish, in each county, there are 
families around which the others would group them- 
selves ; important personages, gentlemen and noblemen, 
who would take the control and make a beginning, 
who are followed, who are marked out beforehand by 
their rank, their fortune, their services, their education, 
and their influence ; born captains and generals who will 
rally the dispersed soldiers, and instantly re-form the 
army, quite the opposite of France, where the middle- 
class citizen and the workman, the noble and the pea- 
sant, are distrustful and at variance, where the blouse 
and the coat rub shoulders with rancour and fear, 
where the sole chiefs are unknown functionaries, 
movable, provisional, to whom exterior obedience is 
paid but not close deference, and who are submitted to 
without being accepted. 

Thus their Government is stable, because they possess 
natural representatives. It is necessary to reflect iu 
order to feel all the weight of this last word, so simple. 
What is a representative ? To represent a person or 
a society, great or small, it matters not of what kind, 
is to render it present in a place where it is not, to 
decide, to order, to do in its stead and for it, that which 
through absence, ignorance, insufiiciency, or any other 
hindrance, it cannot do except by substituting for its 
own incompetent will the competent will of its repre- 
sentative. He is like a manager, a proxy, like a captain 
entrusted with the guidance of a ship, or an engineer • 
employed to cuixstruct a bridge. Thus, in public affairs! 



THE GOVERNMENT, 199 

as in private affairs, my true representative is lie wLose 
decisions are based on my firm support. Whether that 
support be manifested or not by a vote matters little ; 
votes, counted suffrages, are simple signs. The essential 
thing is that the support exists and subsists, written 
or not, noisy or silent. It is a constant mental state, 
being an energetic and persistent disposition of the 
mind and of the heart; here, as in all the moral sciences, 
it is the interior that must be regarded. Now observe 
that the legal indexes by which this is thought to be 
determined are not infallible ; universal suffrage or any 
other electoral combination may concentrate on a list 
or a name the majority of votes, this majority does not 
prove firm support. Compelled to choose between two, 
lists or two names, about which he has not a decided 
and personal opinion, an ignorant person has not really 
made a choice, and nearly all the nation is composed 
of ignorant persons. The twenty thousand peasants, 
workmen, members of the lower middle-class, who are 
led to each urn, go thither like a flock ; they do not 
know the candidates except by hearsay, scarcely by 
sight. We are acquainted with some who vote at 
random, and say, " The one's as good as the other.'' 
In every case their preference is faint, consequently weak 
and vacillating. They may abandon, leave the person of 
their choice, whom they prefer so slightly, in the lurch ; 
hence their government, whatever it may be, wants 
root. A current of opinion, a street riot may over- 
throw it, "setting up another in its place. The thing 
done, manj^ will repeat again, " The one's as good as 
the other." This waning affection is most frequently 
merely commonplace toleration, and never stiffens into 
a settled choice. Thus all our establishments. Republic, 
Empire, Monarchy, are provisional, resembling the great 



Ill u I 

m 



200 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

drop-scenes which in turn fill an empty stage, disappear- 
ing or reappearing on occasion. We see them descend, 
reascend, with a sort of indifference. "We are incon- 
venienced on account of the noise, of the dust, of the 
disagreeable countenances of the hired applauders, but 
we resign ourselves ; for what can we do in the matter ? 
Whoever happen to be our oflicial representatives, in 
whatever fashion chance or election gives them to us, 
the public will does not unite itself in a lasting way to 
their will. They are not our effective and true repre- 
sentatives, and our society does not allow of better 
ones; let us retain these, lest we meet with worse. 
The upper class does not supply them, since among usj 
levelling envy accepts but sulkily the rich and the noble. 
As for the imitation of America and the installation! 
of an intelligent democracy where a mason, a peasant,! 
shall possess an amount of instruction and of politicalj 
views which are now possessed by a country school- 
master, a notary, to arrive at that point, will require 
century and upwards. Meantime, and as a preparation,] 
one might try the double vote, the first for the Com- 
mune, the second for the chief place of the arrondisse- 
ment ; yet these are but distant experiments and dubious 
expedients. 

On the contrary, in a country like this one, the 
representatives, being natural, are effectives ; the sup-1 
port which maintains them is not slippery, but firm.j 
They are really the persons which the public desir( 
to have at the head of affairs, and not others; 
and it desires them without hesitation, determinately,^ 
with a resolution which lasts. Each parish or dis-j 
trict is acquainted with those of its choice, a day- laboured 
distinguishes them as easily as a cultivated man woulc 
do. They are like to the five or six large trees of th( 



THE GOVERNMENT. 201 

locality, recognisable by their bearing and circum 
ference ; everj^body, down to the children, has reclined 
under their shadow and benefited by their presence. 
In default of enlightenment and nice discernment, 
interest, custom, deference, and sometimes gratitude, will 
suffice to ensure votes for them ; for these are holds 
as tenacious as those of tradition, of sentiment, and of 
instinct ; attachment is the strongest fastening. They 
are thus marked out for government, and in this respect 
the written vote or the raised hand does nothing but 
confirm the tacit assent. Even ki the days of rotten 
boroughs. Parliament then represented the public will. 
It represents it to-day, although the number of electors 
is small. It will still represent it ten years hence, should 
the Reform Bill extend the sufirage.* In my opinion 
these legislative changes do nothing but perfect details 
without touching what is fundamental. The important 
point is always the assent of the public. Now, voters 
or non -voters, the day-labourer and the shopkeeper 
wish as a leader a man of the better class. Whether 
they have or have not the legal means for expressing 
this approval, and of giving effect to it in the case of 
this or that individual, it is gained for the class. The 
leader once elected, whether by them or by others, they 
faithfully follow him, and by this silent support he be- 
comes their member by a more solid title than among 
us where their voices are counted. 

By a more solid title and also by a better title. For 
it does not suffice to be appointed leader in order to 
know how to lead ; the election which confers the 
power does not in any wise confer capacity. A 
long preparation, special education and studies are re- 
quired to be a lawyer or an engineer ; they are 
* This was written before the passiug of the last lleform rill. 



202 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

required for a stronger reason to constitute a states- 
man, to vote with discernment upon great public 
interests, to sift the opportune and the possible, to con- 
template the whole from afar, to have a reasoned and 
valid opinion as to the degree of extension which 
it is fitting to accord at a given moment to the 
suffrage, about the transformation which is suited for 
tenant-right and property in Ireland, about India, 
about the United States, about the various powers of 
Europe, about the chances and the future of commerce, 
of industry, of the finances, and the rest. Success is 
not attained in these matters by abstract principles, by 
newspaper phrases, hj vague notions brought from 
college or from a school of law, which among us 
constitute the ordinary luggage of a politician. Such 
optical instruments are of no avail, or are deceptive. 
The advocate's education, the routine of the head of 
a department, limited, local, and technical experience, 
add nothing to their reach. It is not thus that ex- 
tended views are obtained. They are not procured save 
at great cost. One is bound, in order to procure them, 
to travel, to know languages, to meet abroad learned 
men and make political acquaintances, to acquire 
terms of comparison among foreigners, to mark on the 
spot foreign manners, institutions, governments, pub- 
lic life, and private life. Many members of Parliament 
make no other use of their holidays than to pro- 
ceed to the Continent and institute an inquiry for 
a fortnight or for six weeks. They come to France, 
to Spain, to Italy, to Germany, in order to refresh, 
rectify, deepen their previous impressions, not once, 
but five, six, and ten times. They wish to keep them- 
selves abreast of what is going on, follow the fluctuations 
of public opinion. In this manner, their judgment is 



THE GOVERNMENT, 203 

never behind-liand, and its chances of being correct are 
increased. Let a black spot form in Denmark, in Poland, 
at Rome, in the United States; almost immediately 
they are there, and bring back precise information. 
Abroad, they get introduced to eminent or special 
men, invite them to their residences, turn them over 
and read them like volumes, frequently noting all the 
details of their conversation, and on their return com- 
municating the manuscript to the persons of their circle. 
I have read such manuscripts ; nothing more instructive. 
To this information they add inspection of things. One 
of them goes to our farms, examines the manure, the 
implements, the cattle, makes a collection of statistics, 
and, on his return, prints or delivers a series of lectures 
on the state of agriculture in France. Another one 
surveys the Paris manufactories, whilst his wife visits 
the professional schools. Below the statesman, nearly 
all the rich or merely well-off people do likewise. I 
know one who, having several children, and making 
some £500 a year, annually deducts from this moderate 
income £40 for an excursion. Not one young 
man of good family does not make the round of the 
Continent; every complete education includes travels 
and a residence abroad for a longer or shorter time. 
During the vacation, barristers, lawyers, professors 
visit Germany in hundreds. Many observe but the 
outsides of things ; a vessel cannot hold more than its 
capacity ; yet all bring back with them some ideas, or, 
at the least, notions less false, and prejudices less gross. 
All this information combined forms a more enlightened 
public opinion on great subjects, less incompetent in 
political matters, more sensible, nearer the truth, more 
open to good counsel. As a consequence, the states- 
man who has discerned the right path is sxistained, 



204 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

encouraged. The crew elects the captain by acclama- 
tion ; frequently, indeed, opinion seeks him out, and 
leads him to the helm. 

A thing more essential still is that such an education 
is the surest means for forming him. Spread over the 
whole upper class, it inevitably descends upon the great 
spirits as upon the minor spirits of the class. If one 
of them be well endowed, he does not miscarry for lack 
of sufficient and appropriate culture ; he receives that 
which develops it, and his talent or his genius at- 
tains its full growth. As, moreover, his situation, his 
fortune, and his connections exempt him from too 
lengthened an apprenticeship and the petty troubles 
about money, he can yield his fruits at an early period. 
Thus it was with the second Pitt, Canning, Sir Hobert 
Peel, Lord Palmerston ; at the present day with Mr. 
Gladstone and Lord Derby. Doubtless it is unfortunate 
that hereditary riches and premature importance should 
serve unjustly to crown an entire class, and, in con- 
sequence, some rascals, several brutes, and a quantity 
of mediocrities. But it is at this price that a select 
few can be formed. The institution resembles a stud ; 
out of one hundred animals you get six good racers ; 
out of a thousand, a racer of the first class. Consider 
that, without competent chiefs, a State cannot prosper, 
and that there are cases where, for want of a great 
man, a State falls ; can you pay too dearly for a certain 
contingent of competent chiefs, and the frequent chance 
of a great statesman ? 



XYI. 

IIAGGED SCHOOLS, HOSPITALS, WORKHOUSES, AND THE 
VOLUNTEERS. 

T ET us see the macliine' at work. The Edinburgh 
-*^ Review for July, 1861, says : " It is a distinctive trait 
of this country, and a trait of which we are proud, that 
we manage our affairs ourselves, and without the inter- 
vention of the State." For example, in twenty-one 
years, out of £13,200,000 expended in national educa- 
tion, the State has contributed- only £4,200,000 ; the 
rest has been supplied by subscription. Private societies 
abound : societies for saving lives from drowning, for 
the conversion of the Jews, for the propagation of the 
Gospel, for the advancement of science, for the pro- 
tection of animals, for the repression of vice, for render- 
ing working men possessors of freeholds, for building 
good dwellings for them, for producing funds for their 
savings-banks, for emigration, for the propagation of 
economic and social knowledge, for the right observance 
of Sunday, against drunkenness, for founding a school 
for female teachers, &c. It is sufficient to walk 
through the streets and turn over the newspapers or 
reviews, to divine the number and the importance of 
these institutions. My friends tell me that they are 
nearly all conducted seriously and conscientiously. The 



2o6 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

Engllsliman does not sever himself from public affairs : 
they are his affairs; he desires to share in their manage- 
ment. He does not live apart; he considers himself 
bound to contribute in one way or other to the common 
good. In like manner, among us an ordinary honest 
man considers himself bound to go regularly to his 
office or his counter, there to inspect matters or to 
labour ; he would lose all esteem for himself, he would 
regard himself as an odd fish, or, what is more, a fool, 
if he entrusted this to another, if he suffered himself 
to be put in a bad wa}", to be duped, to be robbed by 
a representative. 

C took me to a meeting for the education and 

the reform of young vagabonds. The association 
maintains about one hundred youths from thirteen to 
twenty, some having been convicted, the others intro- 
duced by very poor parents, who place them in charge 
to prevent them keeping company with rascals, and to 
hinder them from becoming thieves. They are lodged, 
they are clothed, they are fed, they are taught a trade 
(shoemaking, printing, toy and furniture- making, &c.). 
Those in the second category have the privilege of 
belonging to a brass band, which plays in the court 
before the proceedings begin. Their faces are dull, 
and not very pleasing ; they have a special uniform, 
grey and blue ; a penitentiary, even a private one, even 
well-kept, is never a place of pleasure. The establish- 
ment was founded by Mr. Bowyer, a sort of lay St. 
Vincent de Paul; it bears this name, ''Preventive and 
Reformatory Institution." Contributions are asked from 
those who enter, and a little pamphlet is handed to 
them. I there read that ''the cost of maintaining 
each youth in the establishment is on an average about 
£17 a year, whilst the cost for maintaining each 



RAGGED SCHOOLS. 



207 



criminal in Holloway Prison is equivalent to a curate's 
salary (£75), and that the thefts of a London pick- 
pocket are not estimated at anything less than £300 
a year." Conclusion : it is more economical to pay 
here for a young vagabond, than to let him grow up 
outside. English charity justifies itself by figures. 

Fifteen of them leave to-day for Australia, of their 
own choice ; their passage is paid ; to-day's meeting is 
on account of their departure. 

They are in the middle of the audience, on three 

benches, and they listen. Lord , member of the 

Upper House, and a wealthy landed proprietor, is 
chairman, and opens the meeting. Timid air, small 
shrill voice, large pointed collar sticking up from a 
badly-made coat ; he has rather the mien of a retired 
shopkeeper than of a great lord. After some halting 
phrases, he reads several very proper letters from the 
youths who have left the institution. One of them, a 
woodcutter in the virgin forest, thought at first that 
it would be impossible for him to become. used to the 
solitude ; now he labours, without being weary, from 
the rising to the going down of the sun. Yet he can 
speak to no one, save for a quarter of an hour to the 
woman who brings him his food daily. 

Another speech, that of an oratorical Bishop, and 
who makes similar ones every day : " You have been 
supported here, sheltered from temptations, like plants 
under . glass ; this was in order to allow your good 
instincts time to take root. IN^ow you are about to be 
transplanted into the open air, left to yourselves ; it 
is necessary that your roots should implant themselves 
and live. For that do not have confidence in your- 
selves, but in Jesus Christ, who is your only friend, 
who will be your help in solitude, amid temptations." 



2o8 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

Good delivery, paternal and grave, without emphasis 
or book phrases ; he adapted his "language to the listen- 
ing minds. Beside,s, the Protestant religion is effica- 
cious in such a case; the Bible of Robinson Crusoe 
is the companion of the squatter alone amidst desert 
woods. 

Third speech by Mr. S , a member of the House 

of Commons, who especially addressed himself to the 
audience. During an experience of twenty-five years 
he has verified the extreme usefulness of transplanta- 
tion ; in the first place, because it removes the youths 
from the contagion of bad example ; next, and above 
all, because it induces the development of English 
qualities — energy, habits of self-reliance, fondness for 
striving, all the inclinations which, having no outlets 
on the London pavement, are turned at home against 
society and in favour of evil. Good reasoning, very 
pertinent, free from rhetoric ; that is rare in France. 
He ended by proposing thanks to the Bishop, and 
the whole audience, the ladies and the young girls 
too, raised their hands to vote the thanks. 

Thence we went to visit a ragged-school. This is 
a large brick building, in which the rooms are very 
airy and well-kept ; I silently contrasted them with the 
narrow chambers of a corresponding school in Paris. 
Unfortunately they were empty; the children had a 
holiday to-day, and the friend who brought me was 
obliged to go away. He said, " That does not matter ; 
there is another ragged-school close bj^, in Brook Street; 
go and see it.'' "All alone, without introduction?" 
" Certainly, and they will be very polite." I went 
thither, and, in fact, a gentleman who was about to 
leave, made me enter, introduced me to the master, and 
conducted me through the whole cstiiblishment, which 



RAGGED SCHOOLS. 209 

is very complete, and, in addition to the school, includes 
a nursery, an asylum, workshops, &c. ; on the upper 
floor, dormitories for the elder ones. During the day, 
the beds are turned against the wall ; during the 
night, by means of machinery it would take too long 
to explain, they can be isolated and carefully 
watched. ^ 

In the shops, the young boys worked at basket- 
making, at preparing small wooden models for draw- 
ing-schools ; they were made to sing, close up, march 
before me. Assuredly it is right to occupy and in- 
struct them in this way ; for their faces are disquieting, 
and resemble those of young prisoners. The large 
room for the very young children was nearly full, and 
yet had no bad smell. Nearly all had shoes, and they 
were not too ragged. Several little girls held a suck- 
ling in their arms. The most skilful and docile of the 
band are monitors over the others ; they receive a few 
pence weekly. Every one is taught to read, to write, 
to reckon, to sing, to go through drill. The mistress 
teaches sewing to the girls ; she is a young and pretty 
person, full of spirit, good humoured, whose joyous 
mien and cordial manners are excellent in such a place ; 
she earns twelve shillings a week, and the master 
twenty-five. In my opinion, an establishment like 
this, especially in a poor neighbourhood, is a moral 
disinfecting apparatus ; indeed, documents show that in 
London the numbers of the youthful delinquents, which 
were 10,194 in 1856, had fallen to 7,850 in 1866. It is 
calculated there are tw6nty-five thousand children in 
the London ragged-schools, three hundred thousand in 
those of all England. Three among them alone are 
aided by the Government ; all the others are entirely 
supported by private persons. They feel that tho 



210 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

school, like the police, and better than the police, con- 
tributes to the secnritj^ of the streets. 

Conversations in the evening about various analogous 
societies ; too many were named to me, I can but 
mention some of them. An establishment has been 
founded, a sort of club, where governesses, ladies of 
good character, having good certificates vouching for 
them, can find, when they come to London to make 
purchases or to give lessons, a dinner, fire, a library, tea, 
persons of their acquaintance. Another private esta- 
blishment contains about eighty poor young women ; 
this is to remove them from temptations ; they are 
furnished with work, and, besides, living in common is 
less expensive. The cost for each of them is about ten 
pounds a year. There is a society for selling Bibles ; 
they are sold instead of being distributed, because, 
if given away, they would not be valued. The ladies 
of the association, being too far apart from the people, 
had no hold over them ; they devised as intermediaries 
poor, honest, zealous women who act as their repre- 
sentatives, carry the Bible into the worst neighbour- 
hoods, make friends with the working men's wives, 
assemble them in a room at night, teach them sewing, 
housekeeping, &c. At this moment, an hundred of 
these Bible- women are on duty ; one of them, last 
year, sold 419 Bibles and 501 JN'ew Testaments. Tem- 
perance associations ; there are some throughout all 
England. I recently saw, in the street, young wives who 
belonged to these societies ; there were ten carriages ; 
they were going to a meeting. They pledge them- 
selves never to drink spirits ; some of them through 
scruples have refused to take the potion prescribed by 
the doctor, or even the sacramental wine. A placard 
intimates that the *' Total Abstinence Association'' 



RA GGED SCHOOLS, ETC, 2 1 1 

will liold its meeting at a certain place, and gives the 
programme of tlie proceedings : several bands of music, 
tea at four o'clock, walking in the park, exhibition of 
a collection of carpets, divine service in a pretty 
church, speeches by the principal members, admission 
at reduced prices for the members of all the temperance 
associations. This absurd mixture of purposes and 
opposite attractions is truly English. Many of these 
societies correspond or act in concert ; for example, 
most of the mechanics' institutes and the ragged-schools 
are in combination with a savings-bank ; this is to 
teach saving and its advantages to children and young 
people. When one of these societies is important, it 
has its journal, its review, magazine, its special publica- 
tions : that is the case in the Wesleyan Association, the 
Ragged-Schoolo Union, the Society for the Diffusion of 
Social Science, the large society which multiplies and 
distributes Bibles, &c. I do not speak of the leagues 
which have for object some legal reform, which are 
transitory like their object ; the most celebrated of 
these was the Anti-Corn Law League, of which Cob- 
den was the chief. Details concerning it will be found 
in the works of our Bastiat : enormous subscriptions, 
meetings, itinerant lecturers, public lectures, small 
popular tracts, big learned works, a universal and in- 
cessant propaganda ; the machine is admirable for 
rousing and altering opinion. Here, let a man have 
a good idea ; he communicates it to his friends ; 
many of them think it good. Together they find the 
money, publish it, solicit support and subscriptions. 
Sympathy and subscriptions flow in, publicity in- 
creases. The snow-ball goes on increasing, strikes 
against the door of Parliament, pushes it partly open, 
and ends by opening or breaking through it. Such 



I 



£12 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

is fclie meclianisra of reforms ; it is tlius that one per- 
forms one's work oneself, and it must be said that over 
all the soil of England there are pellets of snow on the 
way to become balls. Many break the one against the 
other, or melt by the way ; but new ones are alwaj^s 
being formed out of their fragments, and to see the 
human ant-heaps determined to push them along is 
a fine spectacle. 

To explain this zeal, we find the following reasons : 
i. The Englishman has need of action; when he has 
done his own business, a surplus of energy remains 
which is expended in public afiairs. Besides, many 
persons being independent, and possessing leisure, have 
no other outlet ; it is the same need of action which 
produces their travels and a quantity of painful enter- 
prises ; for example, Miss Nightingale was neither a 
devotee nor a mystic after the manner of a Sister of 
Charity, when she went to organise the hospitals in 
the Crimea; her whole incentive consisted in the idea 
of humanity and a very active mind. 2. The English- 
man is rich, and, in addition, when he provides for the 
future, it is in another way than the Frenchman — by 
his expenses, not by his savings. For instance, he 
prefers to leave less to his children, and to give them 
a better education ; he consents to work an extra hour 
daily in order not to forego an excursion. Owing to 
the same motive, he can ^\n% and he gives willingl}^, 
a portion of his time and of his means to consolidate 
and improve the society which protects him and will 
protect his property. A man who rightly understands 
his interests upholds the roofs of the great national 
mansion as carefully as those of his private house. 
3. By tradition, the antiquity of self-government, the 
diffusion of economic knowledge. The Englishman ia 



HOSPITALS. 



213 



accustomed to look far into political and social matters ; 
he knows the inconyeniences of an unmended roof, the 
effect of water coming through, the danger of a rotten 
beam. Being sensible, reflecting, docile to rational 
reasoning, he inspects his raftei's and tiles every morn- 
ing, he pays the slater without hesitation. 4. He can, 
without wearying, perform all wearisome things, attend 
meetings, examine accounts, &c. He has less need of 
amusement than a Frenchman. 

Yisit to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. It has an 
income of £40,000, in addition to special donations. 
A number of hospitals bear the inscription " Supported 
by public subscription." The council meets once a 
week ; the treasurer, so burdened with work, is not 
paid. Six hundred patients ; eight hundred could be 
accommodated. The edifice is very vast, and includes 
a library, collections, an anatomical museum. The 
young doctor who took me over it, and had lived in 
France, said to me that here a student can see the 
patients all day, and that among us, if he be not an in- 
tern or extern, he cannot visit them after ten o'clock 
in the morning. The beds are separated by a distance 
of five or six feet, and are much more roomy than in 
France. Perfect cleanliness ; everything seems to be 
well appointed and kept ; enormous kitchen, where all 
Is cooked by gas ; a spacious room is arranged as a 
larder. In addition to the female attendants, there 
are nurses who superintend them, w^ho had themselves 
been female attendants, all of them being generally of 
mature age and respectable ; they do not watch. They 
get from fifteen to twenty shillings a week ; they are 
not found in food. They may be hired, like our Sisters 
of Charity ; hence the lay conscience can replace reli- 
gious fervour. 



214 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

Many fractures, and a quantity of very ingenious 
apparatus for supporting the limb; for supporting it so 
that the air circulates, allowing it certain movements 
without detriment to the formation of callus. But 
above all, a quantity of coxalgia, nervous affections, 
scrofula, attributable to impurities in the blood, to bad 
nourishment, to the impoverishment of the human 
substance. The pallid, dilapidated, exhausted faces are 
lamentable. The young doctor admits that an excess 
of labour and of gin in England enormously multiplies 
idiots and lunatics. The patients here do not dream of 
paying in order to escape dissection, which is their 
great preoccupation among us ; the use made of their 
bodies is concealed from them ; besides, they are stupe- 
fied, worn out. So is it with the street girls ; a French 
mind is more elastic, and retains its spring longer. 

The doctor put me into the hands of a clergyman 
who was one of his friends, a philanthropist, and an 
instructed man, who took me to St. Luke's Workhouse. 
Everybody knows that a workhouse is an asylum a 
little like a prison : in conjunction with the poor- 
rates, it forms one of the distinctive traits of the 
English constitution. It is an English principle that 
the indigent, by giving up their freedom, have a right 
to be supported. Society pays the cost, but shuts them 
up and sets them to work. As this condition is repug- 
nant to them, they avoid the workhouse as much as 
possible. 

This one contains at present five to six hundred old 
people, children who have been deserted or who have 
no resources, men and women out of employm.ent. 
The last class is the least numerous, thirty or forty 
women and a dozen of men ; in winter there will be 
more of them. In addition, the establishment gives 



WORKHOUSES. 215 

out-door relief and at home ; this week it assisted 
in that way 1,011 persons. Within doors the outlay 
by the head is three or four shillings a week. 

We went over sixty to eighty rooms, chambers, and 
compartments ; washhouse, brewery, bakehouse, shops 
for carpentering, for shoemaking, for oakum-picking, 
nursery for all the young infants, school for girls, 
rooms for the old men, rooms for the old women, 
rooms for the sick women, rooms for confinements, 
rooms for sick men, for sick children, for lunatics ; 
dormitories, refectories, parlours, places for taking 
exercise, &c. All seems sufficiently clean and healthy, 
but it appears that other workhouses would be much 
finer specimens. The children sing out of tune, but 
look very well. As for the lunatics, the sick, the 
aged, I find them to be, as I always do, more worn- 
out than in Italy or in France ; the human toiler is 
more pitiable in Holland, in Germany, in England, 
than in the Latin countries. However, I consider 
them well enough cared for ; three meals a day ; meat 
three times weekly, and daily for the sick ; excellent 
bread ; the kitchen and the provisions have a comfort- 
able appearance. The sheets are changed every fort- 
night. The rooms are airy, and there is a fire in each 
of them. The old people get tea, sugar, some news- 
papers. Here and there one observes a book of 
natural history, of piety or morality, Chaonhers's 
Journal^ a Bible, and upon the walls, texts out of 
the Scriptures. Touching detail, on the table is a 
pot of fresh flowers. But it would require here a 
specialist who had time to make a stay, and I am only 
a curious inquirer who passes by. I have seen enough, 
however, to feel how much this society occupies itself 
about its poor. With regard to workhouses and useful 



2i6 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

institutions tlie public mind is always kept on the alert 
by collateral associations, by newspapers and reviews, 
and even by romances, which then become the sum- 
maries of inquiries, and the means of popularising 
them. I have read some about prisons and prison 
life; all that serves a purpose. For example, last 
w^eek Pentonville was shown to me, a prison of pro- 
bation, where the convicts remain nine months before 
being transported, and, according to the character of 
their behaviour, obtain a greater or lesser reduction 
of their punishment. This is an admirable iron 
hive, so ingeniously constructed and arranged, that 
it might be placed in an exhibition among model 
machines. 

This afternoon, I received tickets for the review 
of the volunteers, another spontaneous, free institution, 
and based upon the love and understanding of the 
public good. " In the event of invasion, England will 
not have soldiers enough. Let us supply the soldiers, 
to wit, ourselves, and soldiers equipped, embodied, 
drilled." Following this reasoning, they have en- 
rolled, clothed, armed themselves at their own cost, 
without intervention or help from the central power, 
and in six months they numbered one hundred and 
thirty thousand, and they count upon reaching two 
hundred thousand. A painter and a barrister among 
my friends are, the one a private, the other a captain. 
On an average they drill for an hour and a half daily. 
For some time back, in addition to the morning's hour 
and a half, they have had three hours' drill in the 
afternoon as preparation for the grand review. Often 
they get wet, but they joke about their fatigues., A 
Crimean officer whom I know says that they are 
already sufficiently taught to begin a campaign. 



VOLUNTEERS. 217 

Private subscriptions have flowed in ; tlie great help 

the small ; the Duke of has despatched to the 

review, by special train, two thousand of his miners. 
Nearly all the rich or well-to-do young men have 
put their names down ; their club bears the title " For 
Hearth and Home," and the ladies encourage them. 

It is in Hj^de Park that the evolutions take place. 
An immense stand surrounds the enclosure ; around, 
the windows of the houses are crowded with spectators, 
even the roofs are covered ; boys have climbed the trees, 
and hang there in clusters, singing with a sharp voice. 
The Horse Guards keep the ground, and the Queen in 
her carriage is welcomed with loud hurrahs. As far as 
can be seen red uniforms stand out upon the verdure, 
and at last is seen the grey line of the new militia. 
As well as I can judge they go through their move- 
ments well; at all events, they are equipped in a 
practical manner, without luxury or frippery, not to 
make a show, but to do work. What this institution 
has given rise to in the shape of meetings, discussions, 
letters published in the newspapers cannot be described ; 
to me it is clear that self-government, among other 
advantages, has the privilege of bringing into play at 
every moment all the thinking faculties of the nation. 



218 



XYII. 

THE CONSTJTUTION. THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT. 

ryiHE better I become informed and the more I reflect, 
-■- tbe more it seems to me that the mainspring of tbis 
government is not tbis or tbat institution, but certain 
very energetic and very widely diffused sentiments. If 
it be solid and is upheld, it is because of tbe universal 
and profound respect entertained for several things. 
If it be active and advanced, it is because, these things 
excepted, all the rest is thrown open to individual dis- 
cussion, control, and initiative. 

One of my friends knew Yincent, a journeyman- 
printer, whom the trades-unions sent during the 
elections to harangue the people. Yincent sum- 
marised his oratorical experiences thus : "I can utter 
all that comes into my head, attack it matters not 
whom or what, except the Queen and Christianity ; if 
I spoke against them my hearers would throw stones 
at me.'' In addition to these two inviolable sanctuaries, 
public respect covers, though in a lesser degree, the 
two great edifices whereof they are the centre. Chris- 
tianity is respected, so is the Church, the clergy, the 
pastor. The Queen is respected, so is the Constitution, 
the hierarchy, the nobility, the gentry. Doubtless, 
many working men are secularists, imbued with doc- 



THE CONSTITUTION. 219 

trines analogous to those of M. Comte, irritated at the 
monstrous inequality between profits and fortunes. 
Eut, on the whole, the nation is conservative, and 
lends itself to reform without yielding itself to re- 
volution. 

Classes are not divided among themselves as in 
Prance ; there is no unexpected blow to be dreaded, 
neither from on high, on the part of the throne, nor 
from beneath on the part of the street ; there are no 
available and spare systems which any one dreams of 
substituting for the existing system. Every one is 
agreed about the whole, and before the law each one 
bows the head. Out of an hundred examples in proof 
of this, I shall cite two from both ends of the ladder. 
The Queen and the late Prince Consort confined them- 
selves to their parts as constitutional rulers, and never 
dreamed of overstepping them ; they consented to be 
merely simple moderators, to follow the bent of Par- 
liament and of opinion. They had no party in Par- 
liament, they never intrigued against a minister, not 
even against him whose person and whose ideas were 
distasteful to them, they loyally supported him to the 
very end. On the other hand, here is a street scene 
which was narrated to me by one of my friends who 
came from Manchester. A girl in a rage had thrown 
a stone through a pane of glass, a policeman arrives, 
takes her gently by the arm, and persuades her to go with 
him to the station, " Come along with me, don't resist, 
you will only be locked up for the night." She refuses, 
sits down on the pavement, then lies down, saying, 
''Drag me if you like." A crowd gathers, all her 
companions come and advise her. " Go then, Mary, 
^y gii'l? don't be quarrelsome ; go with him, you were 
in the wrong." The policeman calls his companions, 



220 



NOTES ON ENGLAND. 



Mary is carried off ; neither tumult nor outcries, no 
one resisted ; it was felt reasonable to obey the law. 
My friend added that here when a man who is arrested 
begins to argue, the onlookers make inquiries, and 
that should they find the policeman in the right, they 
give him their help. It is the same in case of out- 
breaks, every class supplies volunteer constables. In 
short, they support their government, and we submit 

to ours. 

An establishment so firmly based can bear attacks : 
speeches, meetings, leagues, will not overturn it. Con- 
sequently, criticism has the right to be continuous, 
energetic, and even violent. The solidity of the Con- 
stitution authorises full freedom of control. Indeed, 
this control is exercised without ceasing and without 
sparing ; every home or foreign question is probed to 
the bottom in fifty articles, handled and turned over in 
every sense, with a force of reasoning and an abun- 
dance of evidence which one cannot help admiring.^ 

To estimate this it is necessary to read the principal 
journals during several months : The Times, The 
Saturday Revieiv, The Daihj Neics, The Standard, and 
the political or economic section of the great quarter- 
lies. Very often they attain high eloquence : good 
sense and manly reason, complete information, verified 
and drawn from the best sources, entire frankness 
carried to the verge of rudeness, the lofty and^ hard 
tone of militant conviction, cold and prolonged irony, 
the vehemence of concentrated and reflective passion ; 
indignation and scorn well from the fountain-head in a 
full stream. A similar polemic among us would m- 
fallibly end in duels and in risings. Here, the cool- 
ness of the temperament modifies the too hasty im- 
pression. It is admitted that invective, even when 



THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT. 221 

personal, does not extinguisli a politician, and that no 
one should fight about a sheet of inked paper. It is 
understood that the clamour and tocsin of the Press 
never terminate in the taking up of arms, but only in 
meetings, in protests, and in petitions. The day of my 
arrival in London, I saw board- men in the streets carry- 
ing placards before and behind with the following 
phrases on them : *' Great usurpation of the rights of 
the people. The Lords add four hundred and fifty 
thousand pounds to the budget without the nation's 
consent." (They had made this addition by altering 
the budget voted by the House of Commons.) " Fellow 
countrymen, petition.'' Some days afterwards, being in 
a distant neighbourhood, at Clerkenwell, I read in a 
local journal the announcement of a meeting on that 
subject. Nothing more ; but this open speaking and 
these perpetual meetings suffice. It may be said that, 
by newspapers and by meetings, one great universal 
Parliament and many minor parliaments disseminated 
over the country, prepare, control, and complete the 
task of the two Houses. 

We proceed to the Houses of Parliament ; as a whole 
the architecture constantlj^ repeats a rather poor idea 
and does not show great invention, it has the merit of 
being neither Grecian nor Southern ; it is Gothic, 
accommodated to the climate, to the requirements of 
the eye. The palace magnificently mirrors itself in 
the shining river ; in the distance, its clock- tower, 
its legions of turrets and of carvings are vaguely 
outlined in the mist. Leaping and twisted lines, 
complicated mouldings, trefoils and rose - windows 
diversify the enormous mass which covei|S four acres, 
and produces on the mind the idea of a tangled forest. 
In default of genius, the architects have had good sense ; 



222 NOTJES ON ENGLAND. 

they have recalled the Flemish town-halls, the lofty- 
chapter rooms, alone capable, by the variety, by the 
elegance, by the audacity, by the delicacy, and mul- 
tiplicity of their forms, to satisfy northern minds and 
modern minds. One of these halls, Westminster Hall, 
which serves for great State trials, is immense and of 
the greatest beauty. One hundred and ten feet in 
height, two hundred and ninety in length, sixty-eight 
feet in breadth ; the rough wooden ceiling which over- 
hangs and sustains the roof, dates, it is said, from the 
eleventh century. In all the other chambers, carved 
wainscoting eight feet high covers the walls with its 
dun facing; above is gilded leather, red and brown 
hangings, stained glass ; from the ceiling descend 
lamps suspended from lustrous chains. The effect of 
the whole is rfch and grave ; for want of sun and light, 
they have recourse to colour like E-embrandt, to the 
contrast of light projections and sombre recesses, to 
the power of red and black tones, to the gleaming of 
leather and wainscoting, to glass which exaggerates 
and diversifies the daylight. 

The Lords' chamber is fine, comfortable, and well- 
adapted for its purpose. Seats in red leather, deep and 
rich wainscoting, Gothic gilding in dull gold ; an 
impression of serious opulence is produced by this. The 
members present are not numerous ; I was told there 
are sometimes five or six ; save on great political 
occasions they stay away ; besides, discussion is fre- 
quently useless, each vote being known before hand. 
The leading members were named to me, and I heard 
enormous fortunes mentioned, the largest are £300,000 
a-year. The Duke of Bedford has an income from 
landed property of £220,000 ; the Duke of Richmond 
has 300,000 acres in one holding; the Marquis of 



THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, 223 

"Westminster, proprietor of a district of London, will 
have a revenue of £1,000,000 on the expiration of the 
long leases. The Marquis of Breadalbane, it is said, can 
ride on horseback for thirty leagues in a straight line 
without quitting his estate; the Duke of Sutherland 
possesses an entire shire of that name in the north of 
Scotland. Three Bishops in white surplices occupy 
their places. But the outsides of the assembly are 
scarcely imposing. One peer has the face of an old 
diplomatic machine, another that of an amiable and 
worn-out librarian ; the minister who rises resembles 
an intelligent attorney. Some young peers are dandies 
and have their hair parted in the middle ; others, 
hugely bearded, remind one of commercial travellers. 

Lord C alone has the fatigued, penetrating, and 

fine physiognomy of an artist. Their ways are very 
simple ; they might be called ordinary men at their 
club; they keep their tall chimney-pot hats on their 
heads, speak from their places, without fuss, in a con- 
versational tone. This absence of stiffness is excellent ; 
an embroidered uniform like that of our senators or of 
our peers is a pomp and a superfluity which re-acts 
within from without and renders the thought as arti- 
ficial as the appearance. These persons do business and 
do not make phrases. 

In the House of Commons from ten o'clock till mid- 
night. There is still greater freedom from constraint ; 
the House is full, and all have their hats on their heads ; 
some wear them far back and pressed down. Several 
wear white hats, fancy trousers and coat, are leaning 
back, half-lying on their seats, one of them is entirely 
lolling on his, and two or three are rather free and 
easy. They enter, go out, talk with a wearied and 
unceremonious air ; certainly a club in which one were 



2 24 NOTES ON ENGLAND, 

to behave m this style would be moderately respect- 
able. 

The ministers were pointed out to me — Lord Pal- 
merston, Mr. Milner Gibson, Lord John Russell, Sir 
Charles Wood, Mr. Gladstone. Alongside of us, in 
the gallery, several members of the Upper House came 
and seated themselves, one young immensely rich 
duke, all had bad cravats, and he had a shabby coat. 
Below us there is silence. The members, tightly 
packed on their benches, have not even a desk on 
which to write. They take notes upon their knees, 
drink a glass of water which they afterwards put on 
their seat. Each one speaks standing in his place, in 
a natural tone and with few gestures. Certainly a 
chamber arranged in this way, and so narrow, is in- 
commodious, and even unhealthy, too warm in summer 
and for the night sittings; a man must be quickly 
worn out there. But this simplicity denotes a business- 
like people, who suppress ceremonial in order to get 
through their task. On the contrary, a raised tribune, 
isolated like that of our Legislative Assembly, leads to 
theatrical eloquence. 

The business of the day related to the encroachment 
of the Lords, who had voted a money bill without the 
assent of the Commons ; the debate, it is said, is one 
of the most important of the year ; the House is full 
and attentive. After Mr. Seymour, Mr. Horsman 
rises. Very distinct pronunciation, a perfectly just 
and convinced tone, energy without emphasis. His 
thesis is that the Lords are not a body of simple, 
privileged personages ; though not elected, they repre- 
sent the people. They are country gentlemen, like 
the others, holding lands and shares like tbe others, 
having the same interests, the same education, the 



THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT. 235 

same ideas, being as well situated as themselves to de- 
cide about the common interests. Election is but one 
means only for naming the representatives of the 
nation ; there were others, for example the possession 
of a certain dignity, which is the case of the Bishops, 
inheritance, which is the case of the Queen and of the 
lay Lords. Besides, since 1832, the Commons have had 
a marked preponderance ; the control of a second body 
is required, without which they would fall into pare 
democracy, &c. Rather long, he repeated himself ; how- 
ever, he made an impression ; cries of " hear, hear " 
arose at nearly every sentence. After him, and in the 
opposite sense, spoke Mr. Bright, an accomplished 
orator. But I had seen too many things these days ; 
my nerves are not as strong as those of a member of 
Parliament, and I left the House. 

How do they get admitted to it ? B , who has 

an important place in the Government, nevertheless 
avows that the electoral machinery is rude, often foul. 
The candidate hires an hotel or a tavern, there keeps 
open table, hangs out flags, pays .for drink, brings the 
electors in carriages, hires musicians, roughs, election 
agents, tap-room orators who make speeches in his 
behalf, sometimes prize-fighters who use their fists and 
throw apples at his opponent. The scene is tumul- 
tuous, often brutal ; the popular bull feels himself 
half loosened. It is admitted that an election is costly; 
Parliament allows certain expenses, and does not think 
there has been corruption so long as these are below a 
certain figure — four or five hundred pounds. For 
this purpose a party can raise funds ; the Duke of 
Buccleuch was cited to me as having once sent forty 
thousand pounds sterling for the election expenses of 
his party. But, beyond the authorised expenses, tliero 

Q 



226 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

are others greater still. It is estimated that an election 
costs often four, five, six thousand pounds sterling and 
upwards. To induce the elector to trouble himself by 
coming to vote, something of a positive kind must be 
given him — a place, the promise of a place, several 
good dinners, unlimited ale and wine, sometimes cash 
down. The result of an inquiry was to show that Mr. 

X , at Z , had paid £30 for one vote, and £40 

for another ; a third elector, desiring to cloak his 
doings, sold to him a hair-brush for £40, which was 
worth 3s. The legal expenses of this election were 
£461, and the secret ones £3,700. At another elec- 
tion, the electoral agent, seated in one room, received 
the electors, agreed as to the price, made them go into 
another room, where a second, agent paid them the sum 
agreed upon ; the bargain and the payment being thus 
separated, each agent could declare that he had never 
performed the twofold operation called bribery. But 
painters alone know how to give the life-like details ; 
on this subject read the account of two elections, the 
one by Thackeray 'in the *' ]S^e\N^comes,'* the other 
by George Eliot in " Felix Holt the Eadical.'' On 
the whole, local influence is the great prime-mover, and 
is chiefly based upon the ownership of the soil and 
upon wealth, upon antiquity of residence and of the 
family, upon the extent of the patronage exercised, 
upon the notoriety and the social position of the candi- 
date. After all I have seen of the upper class, it seems 
to me that these roots are good, healthy, living, despite 
the mud and worms among which they spread them- 
selves like every human plant, although it will still 
require much drainage to purify the mud, much super- 
vision to destroy the worms. 

The machine works well. It does not break down, 



THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT. 227 

nor does it threaten to break down. It operates, and, 
in addition, it accommodates itself to the times, renew- 
ing its, wheels. More than that, by the way in which 
it operates, one feels that it is capable of thorough 
renovation. It will perhaps be able later to permit of 
the indefinite extension of the suffrage, the diminution 
of the prerogatives of the Lords, the suppression of the 
monopoly of the Church ; all that without outbreak or 
dislocation, by a gradual, careful adaptation of the 
ancient parts to new uses. The governing classes are 
becoming informed, they take soundings at every 
moment to measure and ascertain the direction of the 
popular currents, they have an exact notion of what is 
necessary and possible. I was present lately at ai 
sitting of a committee of the House; the business was 
to decide whether the British Museum, which is at 
once a library, a museum, and a collection of natural 
history, should continue as it is, or whether a portion 
of it should be removed to another locality. Seven or 
eight members were before a table in a lofty room which 
was open to the public. They questioned m.en of special 
knowledge ; the first the secretary of a natural history 
society, then the Crown Architect, then the Director of 
the South Kensington Museum, ^and others besides ; 
meanwhile they took notes. The tone was simple, 
moderate, sometimes there were smiles ; the proceed- 
ings might be called an instructive conversation ; in 
fact, it was nothing else. The questions were ex- 
ceedingly minute and precise, relating to the way 
of arranging collections of animals, to the number of 
specimens possessed, to the advantage of exhibiting 
together the male, the female and the young, to the 
number of visitors, to their age and condition, to the 
days when they were most numerous, to the r umber 



2 28 NOTES ON ENGLAND, 

of square feet contained in the building, to the interior 
arrangements, &c. This is how one obtains informa- 
tion, by inquiry and counter-inquiry, with figures, 
details, certainty, acquisition of positive and appli- 
cable evidence. Recently Lord Derby made a speech 
about India, conceived in the like spirit, wholly founded 
upon the statements and decisions of generals and ad- 
ministrators of the country, textually cited, so that this 
speech summarised the experience of thirty or forty 
eminent and competent lives. What a guide and what 
a corrective is experience ! How much good sense is 
needed to trust to it alone ! How much art and care are 
wanted to face it, repeat it, limit it, rectify if, rightly 
apply it ! And how far off are we from this good 
political education ! 



229 



XYIII. 



THE CLUBS, THE BRITISH MUSEUM, THE CRYSTAL PALACE. 



T HA YE been elected member of the Athenseum Club 
-*- for a month. This club is a select and central place 
of meeting, where one can dine and study. It is almost a 
palace, and is surrounded by similar palaces, reminding 
one of our Place Louis XY. It has a peristyle, looks 
upon a garden, and has very spacious rooms. The ser- 
vants in livery are numerous, attentive, quiet. Every 
modern and desirable luxury is found there. The library 
contains 40,000 volumes; the reading-room is splendid, 
containing all the reviews, in all languages ; ever}'' new 
publication ; easy-chairs, as comfortable in summer as 
in winter. At night, sun-burners in the ceiling diflPuse 
a subdued light over the sombre woodwork. Every 
want is provided for ; all the senses are soothed by a 
multitude of trifling attentions due to skilful, com- 
prehensive, and perfect forethought. Close at hand is 
another place — the Travellers' Club — of a similar 
character. How well they know how to organise 
comfort ! Yesterday evening I read in the Athenaeum 
Club an essay by Macaulay, who names Gralileo, Locke, 
and Bentham, as the three originators of the greatest 
modern ideas ; instead of great, put fruitful, and the 
paradox becomes a manifest truth. It is by recourse 



230 



NOTES ON ENGLAND, 



to experience, it is by tlie liking for fact and minute 
observation, it is by the advent and reign of induction, 
that man has been able to become master of Nature, to 
reform society, to ameliorate his condition, to adjust 
things to his wants, to establish a society, the institu- 
tions, the masterpieces of good arrangement and of 
ordered comfort, such as I enjoy at this moment. 

I have letters of introduction and a ticket of ad- 
mission to the British Museum. About the Grecian 
marbles, the original Italian drawings, about the 
National Grallery, the Hampton Court galleries, the 
pictures at Buckingham Palace and "Windsor Castle, 
and the private collections, I shall say nothing. Still, 
w^hat marvels and what historical tokens are all these 
things, five or six specimens of high civilisation mani- 
fested in a perfect art, all differing greatly from that 
which I now examine, and so well adapted for bring- 
ing into relief the good and the evil. To do that 
would fill a volume by itself. The Museum library- 
contains six hundred thousand volumes ; the reading- 
room is vast, circular in form, and covered with a 
cupola, so that no one is far from the central office, and 
no one has the light in his eyes. All the lower stage of 
shelves is filled with works of reference — dictionaries, 
collections of biographies, classics of all sorts — which 
can be consulted on the spot, and are excellentlj'' 
arranged. Moreover, a small plan placed on each 
table indicates where they are placed and the order in 
which they stand. Each seat is isolated ; there is 
nothing in front but the woodwork of the desk, so 
that no one is annoyed by the presence of his neigh- 
bour. The seats and the tables are covered with 
leather, and are very clean ; there are two pens to 
each desk, the one being a st^el, the other a quill pen j 



THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 231 

there is also a small stand at the side, upon whicli a 
second volume, or the volume from which extracts are 
being copied, may be placed. To procure a book, the 
title is written on a form, which is handed to the 
central office ; the attendant brings the book to you 
himself, and does so Avithout delay : I haA^e made trial 
of this, even in the case of works seldom asked for. 
The holder of the book is responsible till he has 
received ba^k the form filled up when he applied for it- 
For ladies a place is reserved, which is a delicate piece 
of attention. What a contrast if we compare this with 
our great library at the Louvre, with its long room, 
with half of the readers dazzled by the light in their 
e3^es, the readers being packed together at a common 
table, the titles of the books being called out in loud tones, 
the long time spent in waiting at the central office. 
The French Library has been reformed according to 
the English model, yet without being rendered as con- 
venient. Nevertheless, ours is the more liberally con- 
ducted ; its doors are open to all comers. Here one 
must be a *' respectable " person ; no one is admitted 
unless vouched for by two householders. This is said 
to be enough ; as it is, those gain admission who are 
worse than shabby — men in working clothes, and some 
without shoes ; they have been introduced by clergy- 
men. The grant for buying new books is seven or 
eight times larger than ours. When shall we learn 
to ijpend our money in a sensible way ? 

In other matters they are not so successful, such 
as the Crystal Palace at Sj'denham, for instance, 
which formed the building for the Great Exhibition, 
and which is now a sort of museum of curiosities. It 
is gigantic, like London itself, and like so many things 
in London, but how can I pourtray the gigantic? All 



232 NOTES ON ENGLAND, 

the ordinary sensations produced by size are intensified 
several times here. It is two miles in circumference 
and has three stories of prodigious height ; it would 
easily hold five or six buildings like our Palace of 
Industry, and it is of glass ; it consists first of an im- 
mense rectangular structure rising towards the centre 
in a semicircle like a hothouse, and flanked by two 
Chinese towers ; then, on either side, long buildings 
descend at right angles, enclosing the garden with its 
fountains, statues, summer-houses, strips of turf, groups 
of large trees, exotic plants, and beds of flowers. The 
acres of glass sparkle in the sunlight ; at the horizon an 
undulating line of green eminences is bathed in the 
luminous vapour which softens all colours and spreads 
an expression of tender beauty over an entire landscape. 
Always the same English method of decoration — on 
the one side a park and natural embellishments, which 
it must be granted are beautiful and adapted to the 
climate ; on the other the building, which is a monstrous 
jumble, wanting in style, and bearing witness not 
to taste but to English power. The interior consists of 
a museum of antiquities, composed of plaster facsimiles 
of all the Grecian and Homan statues scattered over 
Europe ; of a museum of the Middle Ages ; of a 
Revival museum ; of an Egyptian museum ; of a 
Nineveh museum ; of an Indian museum ; of a repro- 
duction of a Pompeian house ; of a reproduction of the 
Alhambra. The ornaments of the Alhambra have been 
moulded, and these moulds are preserved in an adjoining 
room as proofs of authenticity. In order to omit nothing, 
copies have been made of the most notable Italian 
paintings, and these are daubs worthy of a country 
fair. There is a huge tropical hot-house, wherein are 
fountains swimming turtles, large aquatic plants in 



THE CRYSTAL PALACE, 233 

flower, tlie Sphinx and Egyptian statues sixty feet high, 
specimens of colossal or rare trees, among others the 
bark of a Sequoia California 450 feet in height and 
measuring 116 feet in circumference. The bark is 
arranged and fastened to an inner framework in such a 
manner as to give an idea of the tree itself. There is 
a circular concert room, with tiers of benches as in a 
Coliseum. Lastly, in the gardens are to be seen life- 
size reproductions of antediluvian monsters, mega- 
theriuQis, deinotheriums, and others. In these gardens 
Blondin does his tricks at the height of a hundred feet. 
I pass over half the things; but does not this con- 
glomeration of odds and ends carrry back one's thoughts 
to the Rome of Caesar and the Antonines ? At that 
period, also, pleasure-palaces were erected for the 
sovereign people ; circuses, theatres, baths wherein were 
collected statues, paintings, animals, musicians, acrobats, 
all the treasures and all the oddities of the world ; pan- 
theons of opulence and curiosity ; genuine bazaars 
where the liking for what was novel, heterogeneous, 
and fantastic ousted the feeling of appreciation for 
simple beauty. In truth, Rome enriched herself with 
these things by conquest, England by industry. Thus 
it is that at Rome the paintings, the statues, were 
stolen originals, and the monsters, whether rhinoceroses 
or lions, were perfectly alive and tore human beings to 
pieces ; whereas here the statues are made of plaster 
and the monsters of goldbeater's skin. The spectacle 
is one of the second class, but of the same kind. A 
Greek would not have regarded it with satisfaction ; he 
would have considered it appropriate to powerful bar- 
barians who, trying to become refined, had utterly 
failed. 



XIX. 

STREET TREACHERS AND RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS. 

T AST Sunday and the preceding Sunday open-air 
-*-^ preachers, with their Bibles and umbrellas, were 
plying their mission in Hyde Paik ; these were laymen 
who felt impelled to communicate their religious impres- 
sions to the public. On another Sunday I saw two 
men in frock coats and black hats singing psalms on 
the green of a village forty miles from London. I was 
told this was no uncommon sight, especially when 
the afternoon sermon had been good, as the hearers 
brought away with them overplus of fervour which 
required vent. They had long lean bodies, nasal voices, 
upturned eyes ; they .were surrounded by twenty per- 
sons improving themselves by the performance. Zeal 
is very keen, particularly among the Dissenters ; their 
youths have duties assigned to them ; one occupies 
himself on Sunday in distributing tracts at an appointed 
corner ; another holds a meeting of bargemen on 
Thursday, and expounds the Bible to them. Even at 
the present day female Methodist preachers may be 
heard ; it is said that one of the most notable authoresses 
of the age began life in this vocation. In Paris itself 
we sometimes experience the operation of this eccentric 
form uf piety. For instance, the Rev. Reginald ■ 



STREET PREACHERS. 235 

advertised his sermons with the invitation printed in 
large type, " Come to Jesus." Indeed, the maxim of 
this sect is that the most hardened sinner may be 
instantaneously converted by an act of grace. The 

Kev. Reginald ascended the pulpit, gave out his 

text, and then presented one of his flock, a healthy and 
stout young man, as an example and visible token of 
success. The latter opened his lips and said, *'Yes, 
my brethren, I have been a vile sinner ; but the grace 
of God has touched me," &c., &c. This is a truly 
English method of procedure ; it consists in producing 
the document, the tangible proof, the living specimen, 
after the fashion of a zoologist, to uphold a spiritual 
doctrine. 

Another^Sunday, at eight o'clock in the evening, in 
a University town, I saw two gentlemen and a member 
of the middle class preaching in the public highway. 
They do this every Sunday. The first, a young man of 
twenty, is openly afiected, tries to conquer his bashful- 
ness, uses much gesticulation. He says, " Jesus Christ 
came for sinners like us, he took pity upon us, miserable 
sinners," &c. After this beginning the second opens 
his Bible and reads a passage about the inhabitants of 
Jerusalem besieged and famished by the King of 
Assyria ; the latter being terrified by the Angel of the 
Lord, precipitately retreats ; two lepers who were the 
first to venture without the walls, find the tents filled 
with provisions, and eat and drink with delight. This 
is typical of the Christian who has but to rid himself of 
sin to find entire satisfaction in the Lord. Christ is 
our consolation, our asylum, our protector. In relation 
to this a story was told of a sailor going to sea, 
who replied to a gentleman speaking about the risk he 
ran, ** It is true that my father was drowned, that my 



236 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

brother was drowned, and that my grandfather was 
drowned also." "Then, why do you go to sea?" 
"Sir, where did your father die?" "In his bed." 
*' And your grandfather ? " " In his bed." " And 
your other relations ? " *' In their beds." " Yet you 
are not afraid to lie down in bed, and with good reason. 
For a Christian, whether on sea or land, the only 
assurance is to know Christ." The last of the three — a 
thin young man, lantern -jawed, and with a grating voice 
— appeared moved by the spirit ; but, as his theme was 
the same, I went off at the end of a quarter of an hour. 
The audience consisted of about fifty persons, men and 
women, well-dressed for the most part ; at intervals some 
of them whispered and smiled ironically, but the majority 
of the men and all the women listened attentively, and 
appeared to be edified. I heartily approve of these 
proceedings. In the first place they provide a vent for 
a consuming passion, for an intense conviction which 
for lack of an outlet would degenerate into madness, 
melancholy, or sedition. In the second, they are 
moralising and may do much good to many consciences. 
In the third, they keep alive among the public the 
belief that there are noble ideas, genuine convictions, 
perfectly zealous souls ; for man is only too ready to 
fancy that indifference and amusement are the end of 
life. 

These are relics of the old Puritan spirit, the stunted 
remains of a grand fauna which has become fossilised. 
Yet the essence is altogether religious. According to 

G , who has finished his studies here, most of the 

young men, including those whose intellects are active, 
have never had a twinge of infidelity ; that which is the 
rule with us being the exception with them ; they throw 
their whole soul into the service at church. Three- 



STREET PREACHERS, 237 

fourths of the newspapers and books denounce, with an 
air of conviction, " French scepticism and German 
infidelity," that is to say, the heresy which denies, and 
the heresy which affirms. As for grown-up men, they 
believe, though lukewarmedly, in God, in the Trinity, 
VQ. Hell. The Protestant dogma chimes in with 
the serious, poetic, and moral instincts of the race ; 
they require no effort to retain hold of it ; they could 
not reject it without much effort. An Englishman 
w^ould be exceedingly mortified if he had no faith in 
another life ; in his eyes it is the natural complement 
of the present one ; in every important crisis his 
thoughts grow solemn, and turn towards the vista 
beyond the grave. In order to image to himself the 
mysterious country which attracts the aspirations of 
his soul, he has a sort of antique map, which is Chris- 
tianity explained by a highly revered body of geogra- 
phers, who are the clergy. The map admits of many 
explanations, and the official geographers permit a 
certain latitude to individual views. Being unfettered, 
he is not dissatisfied; never dreams of distrusting either 
his geographers or his map. On the contrary, he would 
be displeased with the meddlers who should endeavour 
to unsettle the opinions he holds on this head. They 
are formed, fixed, rooted ; they constitute a part of his 
education, of his traditions, of the great public body 
whereof he forms a unit. He accepts Protestantism 
and the Church as wholes, along with the English 
Constitution. He sees in Protestantism a rule of con- 
duct, a command to do justice, an appeal to internal 
self-government. The Church he regards as an auxi- 
liary of the State, an institution of moral hygiene, a 
good government for souls. All these reasons combine 
to make respect for Christianity alike a duty and a 



238 NOTES ON ENGLAND, 

matter of propriety. It is very reluctantly admitted 
that an unbeliever can be a good Englishman and an 
honest man. Censure is passed upon those who, having 
become sceptics themselves, try to shake the faith 
of others. " Intellectual poltroonery," says the Edin- 
burgh Heview for April, 1848, " is the only species of 
cowardice which is common in this country, but it 
prevails to a lamentable extent. Most of our writers 
have scruples and fears about the tendency of their 
works. The social penalties attached to unorthodox 
opinions are so severe and unmercifully inflicted, that 
among us philosophical criticism and science itself 
mysteriously hint at matters which ought to be pro- 
claimed from the house-tops." Not only are the lofty 
flights of the intelligence impeded, but in many cases 
an extreme strait- lacedness checks conversations and 
even actions. M. Guizot relates in his " Memoirs," 
that having said in company, " Hell is paved with 
good intentions," he was taken to task by a lady, who 
told him that the word " Hell " was too serious a one 
to be introduced into general conversation. Particular 
oaths, such as " Dieu me damne," are odious, and 
nothing is accepted as an excuse for employing them. 
A young Frenchman of my acquaintance here, when 
rowing some persons in a boat, made a false move, 
whereby he fell backwards, letting slip the forbidden 
oath. The ladies of the party were astounded, and 
gazed intently upon the water ; one of the gentlemen 
laughed outright, while the two others blushed like 
young girls. This religious prudery often leads to 
hypocrisy. I am acquainted with a London merchant 
who visits Paris twice yearly on business ; when he is 
there he is very jovial, and amuses himself on Sunday 
as freely as any one else. His Paris host, who visited 



STREET PREACHERS, 239 

him at his house in London, where he was made tho- 
roughly welcome, going down-stairs on Sunday to the 
room where there was a miniature billiard-table pushed 
the balls about on it. The merchant in alarm begged 
him to stop at once, saying, " The neighbours will be 
scandalised should they hear this.'' When next he 
visited Paris he took his wife and daughters with him ; 
this time there was no more gaiety, good fellowship, or 
pleasure-trips on Sunday ; he was stiff, starched, a per- 
fect pattern of propriety. His religion was a court 
dress. Such is the cant which disgusted Lord Byron. 
During the past twenty years it has diminished ; 
Comte's philosophy, German exegesis, the conclusions 
of geology and the natural sciences, make their way 
slowly but continuously; free inquiry re-assumes its 
sway, and opens the doors without breaking the 
windows. 



XX. 



ARISTOCRATIC ASCENDENCY. 

A S observations multiply they converge. There is no 
-^^ greater pleasure when travelling than to see the 
new facts fit in to those already collected, and group 
themselves like the traits where the tones of a painting 
begin. The following are those of this week with 
regard to the aristocratic ascendency and the senti- 
ments it inspires. 

A middle- class lady, but polished and distinguished 
in appearance, entered a cheesemonger's shop in 
Brighton. The shopkeeper asks her, in his soft, obse- 
quious tone, " What kind of cheese, ma'am, do you 
patronise ? " It is honourable for merchandise to 
obtain aristocratic approval. In proof of this one sees 
on tins of biscuits and pots of pomade the inscription, 
"Adopted by the nobility and gentry." 

B came to France during the Exposition, and 

was surprised at the familiarities of the soldiers with their 
ofiicers. When a captain of the Gruides was looking at 
a picture in a shop window, two soldiers standing 
behind him bent forward, and looked over his shoulder. 

B said to me, " Such conduct would not be tolerated 

with us ; we have distinctions of rank." Dr. Arnold, 
in the notes of his trip made in 1839, made a similar 



ARISTOCRATIC ASCENDENCY. 241 

remark at Calais : '' I observe here a mixture of classes 
which may be good, but that I cannot tell. Well- 
dressed men converse familiarly with persons who 
certainly belong to the lowest class." For my own 
part, as a Frenchman, I cannot help feeling slightly 
surprised when hearing, as I did yesterday, a gentleman 
of forty years of age, a man of worth and position, 
saying "J\Iy lord " to a little boy of ten, a dunce and 
a fool, but the son of a marquis. 

I dined recently in the great hall of Trinity College, 
Cambridge. Three hundred persons were at table — ■ 
everything was served on silver. There was a small 
side table for the undergraduates, who are noblemen, 
who wear a distinctive' costume. At the universities, 
and even the public schools, the young nobles are 
surrounded by tuft-hunters, students of low birth, who 
strive by their services and their servility to make their 
fortunes. A nobleman has always a living or a situa- 
tion in his gift, and this he afterwards presents to his 
toady as a piece of charity. 

It is customary to confer baronetcies on three or four 
of the most distinguished medical men of the country. 
During the last reign there was a medical man of 
exceptional distinction whom it was desired to elevate 
to the peerage, but who declined the honour. An 
Englishman who told me this added, " He was right ; 
no man who has held out his hand for guineas could 
take his place among peers of the realm." As a 
Frenchman, I am of the contrary opinion ; yet the 
fact and its commentary are none the less charac- 
teristic. 

A novelist who was a good observer, and whose 
writings I have just been reading, says that '^ in Eng- 
land the people arc far too much inclined to adopt the 

R 



2^1 .VOTES ON ENGLAND. 

opinions of those above them, and to be governed by 
them/' It is exactly the opposite in France. 

I had a conversation with Thackeray, whose name I 
mention because he is dead, and because his ideas and 
his conversation are to be found in his books. He con- 
firmed orally all that he had written about the snobbish 
spirit. I told him a trivial circumstance of which I was 
eye-witness. At a charity meeting the speaker set forth 
to the audience the importance of the work undertaken 

by remarking that the Marquis of , " a person in 

such a situation," had kindly consented to take the chair. 
Thackeray assured me that platitudes like these are 
common ; he said that he admired our equality greatly, 
and that great people are so habituated to see people 
on their knees before them, that they are shocked when 
they meet a man of independent demeanour. " I my- 
self," he added, " am now regarded as a suspicious 
character." 

Stendhal wrote that, "talent and wit lose twenty- five 
per cent, in value on reaching England." In truth, 
the aristocracy of birth or fortune has secured the lead- 
ing place ; artists and authors remain in the second 
rank, with the exception of five or six of note who are 
admitted into the drawing-rooms of the nobility, but 
only as lions and curiosities. A few, on account of the 
moral or political nature of their writings, are more 
highly esteemed and considered ; such men are of the 
class represented by Stuart Mill, Macaulay, Carlyle, 
Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, and who all contribute 
to exercise an influence over the most important of all 
works, that which concerns the guidance of national 
affairs or popular sentiments. But, according to what 
my friends tell me, the position of the others is lower 
than with us. The able journalists who write masterly 



ARISTOCRATIC ASCENDENCY. 243 

leading articles three or four times monthly do not sign 
their articles, and are unknown to the public. Properly 
sjDeaking, they are literary hacks. Their article is read 
at breakfast, as one swallows the bread and butter 
which is eaten with tea. One no more asks who wrote 
the article than one asks who made the butter. If 
next month the article and the butter are of inferior 
quality, one changes one's newspaper and butterman. 
No journalist becomes Member of Parliament or rises 
to be a Minister of State, as in France after 1830. Yet 
in this matter, as in religion, an insensible change is in 
progress, the end of which will be that the leading 
place will belong to intellect. 



XXL 



SOCIETY AS DEPICTED BY "PUNCH. 



nnUE/N over the pages of the volumes of Punchy wliicli 
-*- is the first of English satirical journals, and com- : 
pare it with the French journals of the same sort; the 
contrast is most instructive. 

Punch has not a single picture of the lorettes, who 
form the subject of innumerable pictures in our journals, 
this being one of our errors ; far better is it not to i 
make a parade of vermin. Gavarni said, "I hate 
the harlot because I love woman,'' and yet he drew 
hundreds of sketches of girls of loose character, all of 
whom, however, he made to look charming. Though 
his raillery only causes a smile, yet, when one sees 
such pictures in the shop windows during several years 
one unconsciously retains an unhealthy impression. I 
pray the reader to pardon this moral phrase; my 
excuse is that it is true. Every spectacle, every emotion, 
leaves a lasting trace on us, and these trifling impres- 
sions multiplied together compose that distinct impres- 
sion which we call our character. At the end of ten, 
twenty, or thirty years, we possess, so far as gallantry 
is concerned, a fund of weakness, of curiosity, or at 
lenst of tolerance, and a vague belief that it is in the 
nature of things that there should be spots on the sun. 



SOCIETF AS DEPICTED BY '' PUNCH r 245 

In Punch not a single sketcli is to be found of un- 
faithful wives or husbands. We all know bow commonly 
these subjects were treated in France fifteen years ago ; 
at present there is a diminution, but they are dealt 
with still. Here, on the contrary, marriage is held in 
honour; its pleasures, charms, and inner poetry are 
depicted. Take, for instance, Punch' 8 picture, " Satur- 
day Evening: arrival of the Husbands' Boat." The 
pier is covered with wives, young for the most part^ 
whose faces are radiant with happiness; the children 
dance for joy. What a welcome ! Turn, by way of 
contrast, to the same subject treated by a French artist, 
the husbands* train arriving at Treport or Trouville. 
The husbands are there represented as repulsive trades- 
men, as snarlers and cuckolds. In the conjugal scenes 
the same sentiment predominates. Augustus, during 
the honeymoon, is shown trying to make the tea. The 
scene is laid at the sea-coast in a pretty cottage ; he 
and his young wife, half- embracing each other, go to 
the window to admire the calmness of the sky and the 
beauty of the evening. Meantime, the tea-urn explodes, 
the dog howls, and the frightened servant rushes to 
see the cause of the noise. Then follows a gentle 
scolding — the artist evidently envies the cares of the 
happy couple he represents. 

In place of illicit love, permissible love-making 
remains to be dealt with. This opens up a wdde field 
which our artists never cultivate. JSTumbers of Punch's 
pictures represent situations wherein parts are filled by 
a girl and young man who half understand each other's 
views on the marriage question. We have no such 
sketches in France, because we have no such subjects. 
At the sea- side Theodore and Emily, sheltered behind 
the harbour crane, think themselves out of sight, and 



246 NOTi:S ON ENGLAND. 

Theodore, on his knees, flattens his tender and snubby 
nose upon the white hand which is yielded to him. 
They are both unaware that the mirror of a camera- 
obscura, which has been directed towards them for ten 
minutes, reproduces the scene for the amusement of 
spectators. In another picture, Edwin and Angelina 
have appointed to meet each other at the end of the 
pier, but the one has taken the right and the other the 
left branch of it. Arrived at the end, they find them- 
selves an hundred feet apart, and have to walk three 
miles before they can meet. Another represents a 
young lady, a good horsewoman, who has leaped hedges 
and ditches, and left her rival lagging far behind. 
" Now, I hope I am rid of Miss Georgina, and I am in 
the same field with Augustus." Indeed, a. horseman 
is seen in the background. Two lovers on horseback 
are exhibited on the Brighton sands ; the air there is 
far superior to the fogs of London — " At least, that is 
their opinion." The irony is well intentioned ; it is 
clear the artist said to himself, " Would that I were in 
their place." Thus he makes his personages as elegant, 
well-dressed, well-bred as possible. The young girls 
are especially fascinating ; Punch depicts himself as a 
lover looking in rapture upon their fair hair falling 
freely over their shoulders ; his heart beats ; he is over- 
come, he thinks them too charming. Here is a covey, 
eighteen in all, in a cove on the sea-coast, in various 
altitudes, some leaning over their sketches, others doing 
embroidery, others picking up specimens, all smiling ; it 
is the "Sirens' grotto." Remark that they are all inno- 
cent of evil, and that the drawing is as much so as them- 
selves; during the rides on horseback, during the gusts 
of wind on the pier, there is no exposure ; if the wind 
strikes their petticoats it is to keep them down. For a 



SOCIETY AS DEPICTED BY '' PUNCIir 247 

like reason the gallantry is respectful, the lover holds 
his sweetheart's skein, of worsted, gives his pocket- 
handkerchief to her little brother ; he is not a conqueror, 
but is under subjection ; he submits himself to his fate. 
Sometimes the girls make the first advance; in this 
the " Fast Girls '' furnish scope for satire ; ono of them 
is exhibited at croquet stepping aside to speak to the 
object of her admiration ; another contrives to get a 
private talk over a game of chess. If need be, Mater- 
familias begins negotiations. A worthy matron is 
shown fishing in ecclesiastical water?, surrounded by 
her three daughters ; she casts the line towards a young 
clergyman, rich.^and of good family, who is on a visit. 
She says, " I am very happy, dear Mr. Cecil Newton, 
to find that you are orthodox ; I need hardly tell you 
that I hope you will not lapse into the sad heresy 
which enjoins the celibacy of the clergy." As for him, 
with his embarrassed manner, his edifying and senti- 
mental grin, and his side- glance at the three pretty 
baits, he presents a most comical appearance. In every 
case, in these pictures as in the novels, at the end of the 
road, upon the horizon, marriage is always to be 
beheld ; no one would suspect that there were any 
intermediate stations ; now, to use Shakespeare's words 
—''All's well that ends well." 

Here are the married folks : look at the domestic 
scenes. They are not unpleasing, bitterly satirical ; 
no broken-down husbands or wretched, bad-tempered 
and spoilt children, like those which M. Daumier 
represents so frequently and with so open a hatred, 
are to be met with here. The artists here nearly 
always regard infancy as something charming and 
beautiful. There is a noise in the nursery caused by 
two processions, each composed of four little boyo and 



248 NOTES ON ENGLAND, 

girls, wlio marcli to the sound of a trumpet ; all their 
cheeks are rosy, and they are all enjoying themselves 
heartily. Two little girls in the garden gravely come 
and ask grandmamma to play with the skipping-rope. 
Another has found the scissors, and is solemnly engaged 
in cutting her little brother's hair, because he wishes 
to be bald like grandpapa. On Christmas night there 
is dancing in a large room decorated with holly, where 
grandpapa smilingly acts as vis-d-ms to his little grand- 
daughter of six, who holds her frock and makes her 
curtsey with an air of gaiety and coquetry. These are 
the incidents, sometimes the accidents ; but always 
there predominates the quiet and lasting felicity of 
family life. 

It is true that the father has quite enough to do 
with his six, eight, or ten children who sometimes 
come in annual succession ; he is fifty years old, his 
head is getting bald, his proportions are becoming 
aldermanic, and his youngest has just been weaned. 
They are as plentiful as rabbits. Another is coming, 
which may not be the last, nevertheless a host of aunts 
invades the crowded house. Paterfamilias, turned out 
of the room, take his dinner on the stairs. A French- 
man would have perspired at the very prospect ; so 
much happiness would be a misfortune. And, then, 
the trouble of such a flock! The father must take 
it to the sea-side, lodge it, provide everything, food, 
clothing, education, health, amusement, and, above all, 
must maintain discipline and peace. Indeed, such a 
family, including servants, constitutes a small nation, 
of which the father is bound to be the head, the magis- 
trate, and the despotic ruler. I know a family which, 
living in the country six miles from any town, consists 
of thirty persons in all. Add to this fifteen or twenty 



SOCIETY AS DEPICTED BY '' PUNCIir 249 

tenants whose houses are close at hand, twelve horses 
in the stables, a farm adjoining, the meat consumed 
being produced by animals reared and killed on the 
property; under such conditions as these a modern 
gentleman does not differ greatly from his ancestor, 
tlie ancient feudal baron. It is true this is a rare case ; 
yet in the families of the middle class in London the 
father exhibits traces of the same authority. He is 
neither weak nor is he reduced to the second 
place, as in our French illustrated books. He feels 
that he is responsible; he directs; he governs. For 
instance, he has resolved to introduce hydropathy : one 
by one the poor children are shown approaching the 
cold shower-bath in their long shirts and oil -skin caps, 
shivering and sorrowful, whilst their father brandishes 
the flesh-brush. Winter has arrived; it is ordered 
that the family shall be shod in cheap boots, and the 
shoemaker is represented under the father's eye fitting 
huge stout boots on his daughter's small feet. Pater- 
familias has resolved upon spending a week at the sea- 
side ; disliking to go to a hotel, the caricature repre- 
sents him installed on the sands; two bathing-machines 
serve as bedrooms, while the dinner is cooked in the 
open air with the assistance of the aunts, mamma, and 
the children, all of whom do something, the eldest son, 
cigar in mouth, being set to prepare the vegetables. 
Paterfamilias, standing up with a sarcastic and satisfied 
air, supervises and controls ; to look at him, it is clear 
that no opposition will be made to his will ; his broad 
shoulders, his expression, his hands crossed behind his 
back, or stuck in his pockets, his gravity, his coolness, 
the scantiness of his gestures and his words, all mani- 
fest that he is inspired by the sentiment of a legitimate 
and unchallenged authority. I grant you that this is 



250 NOTES ON ENGLAND, 

an exaggeration, tliat it is a fiction, that it is a carica- 
ture ; yet the document is none the less instructive ; it 
furnishes a glance at one side of the life of an English 
family. From it one divines why they have and how 
they control half or a whole dozen of children. 

Then come the sketches of servants. As this class is 
a large one, and an English well-to-do family has 
several servants, the artist represents them frequently. 
On the one hand, he pourtrays their troubles. In an 
aristocratic society their place is a low one, and they 
are made to do strange duties. A solemn and imposing 
old lady walking in the park, accompanied by her dog, 
and followed by her footman, says, '' John Thomas.'' 
*' Yes, my lady.'' "Carry Beauty; poor thing, she 
is getting tired." A similar scene between a girl of six- 
teen and her maid. The latter is already carrying two 
dogs, one under each arm, yet the little patrician 
exclaims, '' 0, Parker, you ought to carry Puppet, too, 
he will get his feet wet." It is raining in torrents ; a 
miserly nobleman, well sheltered in his carriage, sa} s 
to his servants, who are dripping wet on the box, 
"Good heavens, have you umbrellas there?" "No, 
my lord." " Then hand me your new hats in here." 
Judging from many of these trifling circumstances, I 
should think that they have fewer comforts in France, 
but that they are treated more considerately. At all 
events, they are not kept at arm's length ; the human 
being is more perceptible, and does not altogether dis- 
appear under the livery. The fundamental difference be- 
tween an aristocratic and a democratic country always 
making its influence felt. On the other hand, the 
artist pourtrays their affectations. As a consequence of 
aristocratic institutions, every class in society sees one 
which it regards as superior* keeps the boundary line 



SOCIETY AS DEPICTED BY ''PUNCHr 251 

clearly drawn, and never mixes with that below it. 
Thackeray has sharply depicted this caprice; it was 
that of the Court when Louis XI Y. was king. Here it 
is in as lively operation among the flunkeys as among 
the gentlemen ; now, nothing is more ludicrous than a 
valet's pride. One man-servant gives his master warn- 
ing because he has seen his lordship on the knife- 
board of an omnibus. Another consents to carry the 
coal-scuttle to the nursery, '' if his mistress asks it as a 
favour, but hopes that his mistress will not mistake 
him for a housemaid." They consider themselves 
gentlemen because they are fine-looking, well- clothed, 
well-fed, and have plenty of leisure. They are fasti- 
dious, are vain of their appearance, and strive to ape 
good manners. One of them consults his betting book 
in the carriage. Another, who has been asked to 
mount behind, languidly stretches himself and refuses, 
*' If my lady does not find it too hot for her, I find it 
too hot for me." A young married lady says to her 
maid, " Jane, I was surprised that none of you rose 
when I entered the kitchen." The maid, tossing her 
head, replies with an impertinent air, " Indeed, ma'am, 
we were certainly surprised at your entering the 
kitchen when we were at dinner." But the faces, 
the gestures themselves, must be seen ; when I seek 
for words other than English ones wherewith to trans- 
late them, I entirely fail. The language of the country 
alone seems to interpret the things of the country ; for 
example, the puckered face of the servant who has 
remained single on account of her ugliness, the self- 
satisfaction, the gravity, the majesty, and the servility 
pf the footman, who knows himself to be a fine-looking 
fellow. 



XXII. 

SPORTING, POLITICAL, AND SOCIAL CARICATURES IN 



"IVTEAELY all the amusements are of an athletic cast 
■^^ It is sufficient to turn over tKe pages of the 
volumes of Punch to see how thoroughly national is 
the liking for horses and for rough sports. Every 
number out of three contains representations of eques- 
trian mishaps and adventures. Nervous or unskilful 
horsemen are continuously jeered at ; jokes are cracked 
about distinguished foreigners who shrink from a leap, 
or who fear to break their necks. Little boys and 
girls mounted on ponies join in the fox-hunts which 
take place during the chilling fogs of winter. The 
young girls, tall, slim, firmly seated in their saddles, 
leap hedges, ditches, five-barred gates, dash through 
the underwood, gallop over the marshes, and come in 
at the finish with a rush, carrying their horses over 
every obstacle, putting inexperienced fox-hunters to 
the blush. Heavy, broad-shouldered matrons trot 
along with the party under the care of the riding- 
master. Entire families, from the grandfather of 
seventy to the maiden of six, ride along the sands 
like a band of centaurs. Miss Alice, who is eight years 
old, mounts her father's horse and offers her pony to 



CARICATURES IN '' PUNCH." 253 

her mamma, who is slightly nervous. It is clear thai, 
they are all the better for vigorous ojieri'air exercise. 
In a journey among the mountains old and young ladies, 
wrapped in their waterproofs, sit on the outside of the 
coach alongside of the gentlemen, the inside being con- 
sidered fitted only for the dogs, who take their ease 
there. At the seaside both sexes promenade on the 
pier during a gale, the wind which whistles in 
their hair, the torrents of rain which deluge them, 
seeming to delight them ; this betrays a primitive 
instinct like that of the greyhound and the racehorse ; 
they need muscular exertion and the rigours of the 
open air to put their blood in circulation. At Paris 
I have seen young Englishmen every night leaving 
their windows open during the entire night in winter. 
This enables us to comprehend their fondness for 
open-air sports, for cricket, for fishing and shooting. 
The rain pours down in torrents and the whole 
country is like a lake ; an old gentleman in his water- 
proof actively handles his fishing-rod. When the 
river is frozen over, he may be seen letting dovv'n 
his line in the hope of catching a fish through a hole 
in the ice made by a labourer with a pick. ^N^o ob- 
stacles, expense, or danger stop them ; they make a 
journey of two hundred miles to the Highlands in order 
to fish for salmon, shoot grouse or deer ; amateurs start 
from London for the meet, taking their horses with 

them in the train. B tells me that a pheasant 

carefully watched and fed during the winter costs its 
owner from thirty shillings to two pounds. One out 
of every three sportsmen has a limb broken before he 
dies. The jokes on this head are endless. A gentle- 
man on horseback informs a neighbour that his animal 
is rather restive ; ** Oh, the animal is well known, it has 



254 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

been tlie means of breaking more ooUar-bones than any 
other in England." A little swell going stag-bunting 
says to a robust friend on arriving at the railway 
station, " Will you take a single or a return ticket ? '* 
The latter replies, " I mean to take a return because I 
know all about the borse I shall mount ; but I adviso 
you to take a single ticket and an insurance one as Avell." 
The prospect seems unpleasant. But it is not always 
so. For persons of a particular temperament, difficult}^, 
trouble, and danger are incentives. Many English 
take delight in exerting, hardening, or forcing them- 
selves to surmount obstacles ; the Alpine Club and 
other associations are proofs of this. The qualities of 
the athlete and the equestrian contribute in their eyes 
to constitute manliness. Thus general opinion upholds 
instinct, arid affectation is the complement of nature. 
In India, Jacquemont saw them fill themselves with 
meat and spirituous liquors, then gallop for two hours 
under a broiling sun, and do this out of bravado, as a 
matter of habit or of fashion, in order not to let it be 
thought that they were effeminate or cowardh', even 
hazarding their lives in the attempt and losing them. 

Most of the youths have the same dispositions. The 
artist depicts them as being precocious in a manner 
different from ours, showing not the precocity of for- 
wardness or malice, the precocity of the senses, but that 
of hardihood and daring. The small and puny street boys 
are not allied to the Parisian Gavroche ; they are more 
handy with their fists than with their tongues ; a good 
joke pleases them less than a display of skill. Two of 
these manikins are shown in winter trying to block up 
a doorway with a snow-ball twice as large as them- 
selves, and though half- frozen are contented and happy. 
Nor are the rich less venturesome and hardy than the 



CARICATURES IN '' PUNCIir 255 

poor. Witness two boys unmooring a boat in order to 
go to sea by themselves. Their pleasures are rough and 
boisterous ; they wade about bare-legged in the pools of 
water, they fish for jelly-fish, which they bring into 
the drawing-room on a stick. While mere urchins they 
learn to box, and they box with gloves in presence of their 
mamma. When their father visits the school and asks 
how they are getting on, he is told, " Oh, pretty well ; 
there are three fellows whom I can lick, and Fred, 
here, can lick six, including me." Another seated on 
a pony as large as a Newfoundland dog, prepares to 
leap a brook, and replies to the servant making objec- 
tions, "Both my horse and myself can swim.'^ B 

assured me that, from childhood upwards, they are 
told, *' You must be a man." They are trained to 
think that they ought never to cry or show any signs 
of weakness, and that they ought to be brave, enter- 
prising, and protectors of the weaker sex. A little boy 
says to a big lady, frightened at a herd of cattle, 
" Don't be afraid, shelter yourself behind me." 
Another, aged six, seated on his shaggy Shetland 
pony, cries to his grown-up sisters on the balconj^ 
'* Halloa, girls, if any of you wish to take a ride along 
the sands, I'm your man." On the other hand, 
gluttony is the vice of these boys, which the artist 
satirises most cordially. Emily has tried to amuse one 
of them in every possible way ; she has given him her 
paint-box, has played on the piano, has shown him 
picture-books, yet he is discontented. " I don't call 
that amusement. I want figs and ginger-bread, or a 
large bit of toffy. That's what I call amusement." As 
a matter of course, the draughtsman conforms the 
physical type to the moral tendency. He does not 
represent them as refined, but sturdy and robust. 



256 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

Moreover, lie eyen loves to exaggerate their natural 
courage. Two children on a donkey wish to leap a 
ditch before which a gentleman on horseback hesitates. 
A youngster of five, his hands in his pockets, says to 
his uncle, a stout gentleman well muffled up, who is 
going out at night, and who is apprehensive about 
robbers, " I say, Uncle Charles, if you are afraid to go 
home alone, I'll escort you to your door." Separate 
from these caricatures the salient and exaggerated 
points, the residue is what the English themselves 
see or believe to be essential. This granted, and sub- 
ject to the necessary rectifications and modifications, 
one can perceive the fact as it actually exists. 

The proofs which demonstrate the temperament, the 
race, and the dispositions, are of all grades. The 
common people, particulaily the peasants, the sailors, 
the farmers, and even the squires of this country, are 
either jolly fellows or hulking monsters ; their outer 
man bears testimony to their brute force. It is appa- 
rent that they glory in guzzling. An old country 
gentleman has the air of a fat pig, who has a recollec- 
tion of his grandfather the wild boar. Close at hand 
is the portrait of an English juryman ; he is about to 
go to court stuffed to the throat, bloated out, having 
fed like an ogre, and, in addition, his wife fills his 
pockets with eatables. This is due to the rule that 
juries are not allowed to separate till they are agreed; 
hunger makes them unanimous in the end ; for such a 
stomach as this, nothing is more terrible than a 
vacuum. There is a holiday in the coal districts, at 
which fisticuffs are the principal attraction ; a daughter 
is represented leading away her father, whose arm has 
been broken, and telling her lover, a country lout, to 
go and take part in the fight. Two sailors at Bala- 



CARICATURES IN '' PUNCHr 257 

clava, imposing and vigorous figliting animals, square- 
shouldered, and well filled-out, approach their com- 
manding officer, and deferentially say, *'Beg your 
pardon, sir, but may not John Grampus and me have 
a day on shore to go to the trenches and do some 
firing with the soldiers ? ^^ Yet the most noteworthy 
personage of all is John Bull, the typical Englishman, 
such as he is depicted in political caricatures; he is the 
representative whom they themselves have chosen. In 
this portrait, which they regard as an abridgment, are 
shown the essence and foundation of the national 
character. When young he resembles one of those 
jovial blades of E/ubens, or rather of Jordaens, who, in 
addition, has the grufihess of a watch-dog. He is 
adult and resembles a butcher ; he is fifty years old, is 
broad-shouldered ; his stomach is prominent under his 
open-breasted waistcoat; he wears top-boots, a low- 
crowned hat, and carries a cudgel in his hand. But years 
have not lessened his energy ; he is capable of standing 
his ground against the most vigorous adversary even 
when it comes to blows. Picture a type of distinction 
and then the exact opposite ; the latter impression is 
that which he makes; his neck is short, his chin large; 
his jaws are solid ; the entire masticating machinery is 
perfectly developed ; a stiff" collar rises half way above 
his shaven chin, and his whiskers are of the mutton- 
chop pattern : thus the lower part of his face resembles 
that of M. Prudhomme. But his twinkling or angry 
eyes, his beetle-brows, the entire expression of his 
countenance, betray marked animal characteristics and 
the choleric temperament. His forehead is small, his 
intellect barren ; his ideas are few and petty, those 
which he possesses being the ideas of a tradesman or a 
farmer. By way of compensation, he is gifted with 



25 8 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

good sense and energy, a fund of good temper, loyalty, 
perseverance, and determination ; that firmness of 
character, in short, by means of which a man gets on 
in the world, and renders himself, if not lovable, at 
least useful. There is something superior to this in 
England, yet we shall not err greatly in taking this 
type and its counterparts to represent the aptitudes 
and the inclinations of the average of the nation. 

At the opposite pole the artistic type is beheld. "We 
all know how in French sketches the artist is raised 
above the citizen ; here, oddly enough, the reverse 
occurs. Musicians are represented as salaried monkeys, 
who come to make a noise in a drawing-room. Painters 
are bearded artisans, unkempt, shabbily- dressed, badly- 
educated, conceited, hardly one degree raised above 
photographers. These are workmen who cannot speak 
English, and who merely form food for ridicule. 
Thackeray frequently struggled against the common 
opinion with respect to artists ; Clive Newcome, one 
of his personages, who is a painter and the son of a 
colonel, remarks with surprise that in Paris artists are 
on a par with the leaders of society, and that Delaroche 
and Horace Yernet are invited to dine at Court. A 
French moralist would never have occasion to dem.on- 
strate that the painter's art is as liberal a profession as 
that of medicine or law. Probably, in the eyes of the 
burly John Bull, whom I Lave just described, a painter 
cannot be a gentleman, seeing that he works with his 
hands. He is not " respectable " because he has 
no fixed income ; besides, it is said that his studio is 
always in disorder. He is a journeyman who wants 
method ; he ranks with his neighbour, the mechanic, 
who works at home, and is ihQ oracle of the pot-house. 

The political caricatures appear to have been drawn 



CARICA TURES IN ' ' PUNCHr 2 5 9 

by Jolm Bull himself; the drawing is stiff, correct, 
without ease or grace, the pleasantry being harsh and 
hard ; the humour is that of a dog. Moreover, every- 
thing is subordinated to a practical object ; the int^'^'' 
tion is to liken an affair of state, a war, a change in 
the Ministry, a political situation, to a familiar incident 
of daily life, so that the most obtuse head may under- 
stand what is meant. In the sketches of manners the 
types are well chosen, clearly defined, and they power- 
fully express the moral trait by the physique. In 
all these respects the artists are Hogarth's suc- 
cessors. On the contrary, in the frontispieces and the 
borderings of each Almanack, the play of fancy, the 
spirit of burlesque, the odd and interminable wealth of 
imagination, the mountebank scenes, the ludicrous pro- 
cessions, the fascinating shapes, or the monstrosities, 
the originality, the sentiment, the comicality of inven- 
tion, abound to an extent as to remind us of Dickens, 
and sometimes even of Shakespeare. 

In order to complete our examination of this collec- 
tion, let us note two tragical caricatures : the subject is 
pauperism, whereof the traces, at least, are everywhere 
visible in England. 

The agricultural labourer has been competing for a 
prize. The miserable wretch in rags, with clasped 
hands, half-starved, deferential, is kneeling, and is 
crowned with roses. Behind him stand his wife and 
six children in a row, looking as wretched as himself. 
The stout and well-dressed President of the Association 
solemnly hands him his prize, consisting of a hammer 
and a stone. He is free to break the stone and distri- 
bute the fragments to his famishing children. The 
spectators smile ; the gentlemen and fine ladles who 
are present gaze with a frigid curloslt}^ as if he W3re 



26o NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

an animal of an inferior and unknown species, upon 
tlie pitiable brute who produces their bread. 

Another subject is cheap clothing. Twenty skele- 
tons are sewing on a table ; their employer, a stout 
middle- class citizen, stern -eyed and heavy -jowled, 
watches them while smoking a cigar. 

These two pictures produce the same effect when 
seen among the others as the sight of one of the 
squalid lanes near Oxford Street when beheld after a 
long walk amidst the palaces, the hotels, and the com- 
fortable mansions of the West-end and the City. 



XXIII. 

INNS OF COURT, BAERISTEBS, AND JUDGES. 

IHAYE been introduced to Jolin H , a young 
and very obliging barrister. He lives in the Temple, 
a sort of nest of lawyers and law students, in which 
the multitude of chambers remind one of a Quartier 
Latin and of a law corporation. The institution is 
composed of four Inns of Court, each of which possesses 
a Hall wherein the members dine, the student's chief 
duty being to eat six dinners here every term for three 
years. A year's attendance in a barrister's chambers 
entitles the students to be called to the bar without 
attending lectures. The professors are six in number, 
and attendance at a final examination is optional. 
There is no resemblance .between this and an important 
Law School like ours, founded to teach the theorj^ in 
the first instance. In like manner there is no Poly- 
technic school here ; he who wishes to become an 
engineer enters an engineer's office, where he learns by 
practice, like a painter's assistant. This deficiency in 
high-class and systematised instruction, this omission 
in the matter of preliminary lectures on the theory of 
a profession, is very noteworthy, and is thoroughly 
English. Besides, it would be no easy thing to 
deliver a course of lectures on English law. The law is 



2 62 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

not codified, as in France, upon accepted philosophical 
principles, but consists of a mass of statutes and prece- 
dents, more or less incongruous, and sometimes contra- 
dictory, which the future jurist must himself digest 
after long study. On the other hand, there is no 
historical school, as in (lermany, characterised by 
delicate tact and comprehensive views, and capable of 
explaining, first, the gradual adaptation of law to cus- 
tom, and, secondly, its origin, its bearing, and its 
limits. The compensation for the lack of philosophical 
theories and historical treatment is found in practice, 
and frequently in routine. Some of these lawyers, 
barristers, solicitors, or attorneys, have incomes of 
£20,000 a year ; one was named to me whose income 
was from £30,000 to £35,000. 

Let us attend a sitting of the Courts at Westminster. 
In civil as in criminal causes a jury is emploj'ed, its 
duty always consisting in settling questions of fact, 
as distinguished from points of law. But a jury is 
employed in civil causes only at the request of the 
parties, who have to pay the jurymen certain fees. We 
were present at three trials. One was a divorce case, 
in which the wife was the petitioner ; this right has 
ceased to be an aristocratic and most costly privi- 
lege ; it can now be exercised for the sum of £25 or 
£30, and is thus brought within reach of the humblest 
purse. Moreover, the reports of these divorce cases, 
which frequently appear in the newspapers, deserve to 
be read, because they unveil one of the failings of 
English households — the tyranny and brutality of the 
husbands. The duty of counsel is very noteworthy, and 
is very different from that of French advocates. They 
examine witnesses as well as plead. At the hearing, 
the plaintiff, the defendant, and each witness are exa- 



BARRISTERS. ^ 263 

mined and cross-examined by counsel. The two 
counsel turn their man inside out in succession, try to 
trip him up, to disconcert him, to make him contradict 
himself. Certainly it is not at all pleasant to be a 
witness in England, the quarter of an hour passed in 
the box being most trying. As a consequence, the 
burden of the trial is borne by the counsel, the judge's 
function consisting merely in supervising, forbidding 
certain questions, tempering the ardour of the cham- 
pions in court, as the Queen tempers the ardour of 
parties in Parliament. Such an active and varied part as 
that played by counsel largely contributes to heighten 
their importance and sharpen their wits. Among 
us they are too often phrase - spinners who plunge 
into rhetoric, and whom the judge has to silence ; here, 
they are qualified, like our " Juges d'lnstruction,'' to 
fathom and control men's minds. Three or four of 
them, with their piercing eyes, clear and thrilling 
accents, rapid and decided gestures, appeared to me to 
be first-rate foxes, into whose clutches I should not like 
to fall. The wife whom I saw under examination stood 
in a little railed box at the side, but was visible to 
every one ; my guide told me that her condition was 
low, her language vulgar, and her clothes hired for the 
occasion. Yet her replies were marked by that concen- 
tration and indomitable energy which I have so often 
noticed in this country. Every minute she had a 
desire to weep, and restrained her tears. She was 
asked if she had not beaten her husband with the 
tongs — if she had not sometimes begun the quarrel ? 
She did not pour forth a torrent of negatives, as a 
southern woman would have done, but she bent down 
her head, reflected for half a minute, and then, assured 
that her memory served her faithfully, after considera- 



264 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

tion and with confidence she replied, " No ; never." 
She spoke with an accent of conviction, the word 
" never " being firmly uttered. 

The reports of criminal trials must be perused in 
order to understand to what a degree the judge's part 
is dignified and honourably filled. Never can there be 
detected in him any traces of the spirit of persecution, 
the sentiments of a policeman, the desire to inflict 
vengeance on behalf of society, the instincts of a hunter 
warmed with the chase, and intent upon securing his 
prey. A passage which I translate says " that the prin- 
ciple of English law is, that a man must be held to be 
innocent till he has been proved to be guilty ; the 
burden of proof rests altogether upon the prosecution." 
Contrary to the French rule, the prisoner may keep 
his mouth closed ; he is not bound to incriminate him- 
self ; no officer of justice of whatever degree is entitled 
to extract his secret from him under any pretext what- 
ever. 

Conformably to this rule of law, when the judge 
pronounces sentence, he does so with the authority and 
with the impartiality of a mind thoroughly convinced. 
He neither declaims nor indulges in invective. He 
neither conceals the weak points of the evidence nor 
exaggerates the points beyond dispute. He weighs his 
words, translating his carefully-formed opinion into 
clear language, and, when he adds moral condemnation 
to the legal sentence, the gravity and nobleness of his 
tones are worthy of all praise. More than once I have 
thought that if Justice herself had a voice, she would 
speak thus. The man himself is transformed into 
the simple organ of truth and of rectitude. The 
prisoner at the bar cannot^ help bowing before such 
a power as this, and assenting to the justice of his 



JUDGES. 265 

sentence. I know no other spectacle which can as 
solemnly imprint in men's hearts veneration for 
the law. Yet in this, as in other cases, the bad and 
the good commingle. I am told that the result of the 
English form of legal procedure is to protect the indi- 
vidual at the expense of society, that it is too difficult 
to obtain legal proof, and that many guilty persons go 
unpunished. 



xxiy. 

THE THEATRES. LIVING IN LONDON. 

Ci OOD society does not go to the theatres, with the 
^ exception of the two opera houses, which are the 
exotic and hot-house plants of luxury, and in which the 
prices of admission are enormous and evening dress is 
imperative. As to the others, the audience is recruited 
from among the lower middle class. There is no longer 
a national comedy in England : playwrights translate or 
adapt French pieces. This is very extraordinary, for 
they have still living manners fitted for representation 
on the stage. In addition, their novels prove how well 
they can depict characters. Satiric humour they have 
always had in abundance ; during the last century they 
had excellent comic dramatists and performers. How 
comes it, then, that in London there is no comedy, and 
that in Paris there is one ? Is it because there is a 
scarcity of droll personages in England ? It appears 
to me that they abound more than elsewhere, seeing 
that types are there more sharply defined and are 
developed even to excess. Is it because prudery of 
manners taboos laughter? There is no hindrance to 
decent merriment, improper joking being alone forbid- 
den. Is it because English reserve has suppressed 
immoderate gesticulation, spontaneous and free cxpres- 



THE THEATRES. 267 

sion of feelings ? But the source of interest lies in the 
situation, and grave personages can play a part in the 
most exciting performance. The whole matter is a 
puzzle, especially for the reader who has just turned 
over the pages of a novel by Dickens or of an album by 
John Leech. 

This evening I went to the Olympic, a small house, 
corresponding in some measure to our Palais E/03'al. 
The opening piece was a burlesque on the Merchani of 
Vetiice, filled with puns and jokes ; but to enjoy such 
tomfooleries one must be a native of the country. The 
other piece, Dearest Mamma, is based on La Belle-Mere 
ei le Genclre. Addison, one of the actors, plays the part 
of an old uncle with surprising spirit and fidelity. 
Imagine to yourself a large, bald, and hearty gentle- 
man, rotund, with his coat closely buttoned, thoroughly 
enjoying life, well pleased to be a widower and unat- 
tached, uniformly good-tempered, wholly concerned in 
preserving " his equilibrium ;" who eats his six repasts 
and takes his three constitutionals daily, who hums 
tunes on all occasions, who winds up his sentences with 
a whistle like that of an old blackbird, who drops off to 
sleep in every easy-chair, and who, hardened by the 
tempests of wedded life, wags his head, and ends by 
snoring comfortably when he is being soundly rated. 
The type is complete, both morally and physically ; it 
is original and sympathetic, very comical and very 
natural, and is perfectly rendered. 

Shakespeare is played at intervals ; I have seen Mr. 
Macready in Macbeth, in which he showed himself 
powerful and dramatic, especially in the scene where 
Banquo's ghost appears, and where, breathless with 
fear, and with a hoarse cry, he casts himself on the 
ground like a maddened bull. The public still laughs 



2 68 NOTES ON ENGLAND, 

when Hamlet says in the churchyard that the noble 
dust of Alexander might now be used to stop a bung- 
hole. Our eyes have been too much changed by habit ; 
we have lost the inexperience of the sixteenth century ; 
the illusion is destroyed by the too frequent shifting of 
the scenery ; we cannot now believe in armies repre- 
sented»by six combatants, and in battles fought upon 
the stage. Even in England educated persons would 
be disgusted to witness Cornwall publicly plucking out 
Gloucester's eyes. To my mind the effect of reading 
Shakespeare's works is far greater now than that made 
by representing them ; at least I do not realise his 
personages so well when they are placed before me 
through the medium of an actor. 

When one is satisfied with the necessaries of life, 
living in London is not excessively dear. A young 
engineer with whom I am acquainted spends 8s. 4:d. 
daily ; his dinner, consisting of roast beef, potatoes, 
asparagus, sweets, and cheese, and beer, costs him 2s. ; 
his lodging, which is very clean, consists of a bedroom 

and sitting-room. B , who has come here to read 

Arabic manuscripts, has a fine room close to the British 
Museum, for which he pays a guinea a week, break- 
fast and attendance included. Both of them would 
pay more in Paris. One may rent an entire house in 
the neighbourhood of Eegent's Park for £100 a year. 
On the other hand, the expense of luxurious living is 
prodigious. Four Frenchmen occupying a first-class 
hotel for thee days had to pay a bill amounting to £72. 
In another hotel, situated in a fashionable locality, a 
sitting-room, bedroom, and dressing-room, candles, and 

attendance, cost eighteen guineas a week. Lord S 

smiled with incredulity on hearing my friend Louis 



LIVING IN LONDON 269 

a Frenclunan, relate that during tlie preced- 
r he had killed thirty-six deer in a park of 
he rent was <£80. Here all the pleasures of 
the opera, sporting, entertaining, are reserved for 
essors of large fortunes, and this constitutes a 
i of demarca lion between the poor and the rich. 

uen was not sent home on the appointed day, 
three days after, when it came at last, but 
id, the reason given by the washerwoman being 
) consecutive holidays had fallen in that week, 
i all the workpeople had been intoxicated for 
ys. 

my arrival I have seen three drunken women 
. daylight ; two of them, whom I saw in a fine 
?ar Hyde Park, were evidently low characters ; 
1 tattered shawls, boots down at the heels, an 
smile, tottering legs, and loosened tongues, 
■d, respectably dressed, and about fifty years of 
ygered in the midst of a crowd, saying with a 
smile that she was drunk, and that the reason 
-J she bad taken too much at the Exhibition. I 
that among well-educated women this vice is 
igly rare, yet it may sometimes be occasioned 
eme lassitude or grief. George Eliot has 
. it in ''Janet's E/Cpentance." The following 
ement in The Times for 23rd November, 1870, 
s material for curious speculations : " A lady 
icinity of London, who takes great interest in 
)very of ladies from habits of intemperance, 
;s to receive into her familj^ one lady from the 
classes, requiring help in this respect. A 
now occurs. Address, Hon. Sec. of the Ladies' 
bstincnce Association, &c." 



270 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

Among the people, however, the vice is frightful. 
During three days I have twice visited Chelsea, 
and each time I have seen men lying in the gutters 
dead-drunk. My friend, who lives in this neighbour- 
hood, often sees working men in this state and position. 
A philanthropic clergyman tells me that out of ten 
workmen eight are drunkards. They get high wages 
in London, as much as from one to two pounds sterling 
a week ; when once they have paid for their provisions 
they have a drinking bout of three or four days' dura- 
tion, imbibing gin, brandy-and- water, and other strong 
liquors. The intoxication produced by these spirits 
stupefies a man, rendering him melancholy and often 
mad. Hence the prevalence of delirium tremens and 
other alcoholic maladies. According to a number of 
the Ragged Schools Magazine, London had in 1848 
eleven thousand sellers of spirits and only four thou- 
sand butchers and bakers. Thirty thousand persons 
are arrested during every year on the charge of being 
drunk and incapable. It has been calculated that 
260,000 persons enter the fourteen principal gin palaces 
every week. In Glasgow there is One whisky shop to 
every ten houses. Statistics show that in Manchester 
the working class expends nearly a million sterling 
every year in drinks ; as regards Glasgow, the amount 
is about the same ; in Newcastle it is £400,000 ; in 
Dundee £250,000. One hundred and forty-one work- 
men having been watched at Preston, it was found that 
the average proportion of their outlay for spirits was 
22 per cent, of their earnings — a little more than 
£11 10s. yearly ; that forty- one expended from 25 to 
75 per cent, of their earnings, and that twelve were 
teetotallers, and abstained from strong drink. Such is 
the effect of the remedy, and one understands alike the 



LIVING IN LONDON 271 

energy of the propaganda and the utility of tliese 
associations. In many streets I saw illustrations pub- 
lished by them, where the drunkard is represented 
prone and helpless, surrounded by little demons, who 
remove his heart and brain piece by piece, whilst the 
Devil himself looks on, holding a bottle of gin, with 
the punning inscription, " My best spirits." 



XXV, 

MANUFACTURES AND ARTISANS. 

STARTED for Mancliester. During the journey I read 
various newspapers and reviews, and among others 
three or four articles upon France, directed against its 
despotic Government, which does not permit private 
individuals to take any part in public affairs. Tho 
writer argues as if Frenchmen were Englishmen ; he 
unconsciously pictures himself in France ; he supposes 
how uncomfortable he would be there, how his feelings 
would be shocked, how our administrative system 
would hamper his actions. Yet these shackles, which 
appear so serious to him, are trifles in our eyes ; the 
majority of the citizens would be much more sensitive 
to the opposite system. To take part in public affairs 
is to increase one's toils ; to be member of five or six 
committees ; to prepare or hear reports ; to listen to 
a dozen speeches every fortnight on the same subject ; 
to digest statistics, and make investigations, are all 
wearisome occupations. We hand over these matters 
to the Government ; if it be a despot, it is also a 
steward. It trammels us in many respects, but it 
saves us from much worry. We permit it to cut 
and carve like a steward possessed of full powers, 
openly criticising its doings, and privately whisper- 



MANUFACTURES AND ARTISANS. 273 

ing that should it become unbearable, we have alwa3^s 
the option of turning it out of doors. The truth 
is, however, that this calculation is faulty ; for after 
years of quiet and indifference we suddenly find that 
we are ruined, and have concluded bad bargains. 
Besides, the forcible expulsion always leads to rioting. 
Moreover, as the master cannot get on without a 
steward, he is compelled, after each disturbance, to 
select the first comer, the misfortune being that he is 
often worse than his predecessor. 

For the first hundred miles the landscape is flat and 
tame ; after this the hills begin, and the country 
acquires an expression. The undulating hill-tops are 
bathed in mist ; sometimes, when the sun shines forth, 
a feeble light rests, like a smile, on the pale green ; 
this fleeting smile, amid the general mourning of 
sodden fields, is most affecting and sad. 

VYe now enter the coal and iron country; every- 
where are marks of manufacturing life ; the cinder 
heaps form mountains ; the earth is seamed with 
excavations ; tall furnaces belch forth flames. We are 
nearing Manchester. In the bronzed sky at sunset a 
strangely-shaped cloud hangs over the plain ; under 
this motionless covering are hundreds of bristling 
chimneys, as tall as obelisks; a huge and black mass 
is next distinguishable, then endless rows of buildings, 
and we enter the Babel of bricks. 

Walked through tbe city ; seen close at hand, it 
is still more dismal. The air and the soil appear 
charged with fog and soot. Manufactories with their 
blackened bricks, their naked fronts, their windows 
destitute of shutters, and resembling huge and cheap 
penitentiaries, succeed each other in rows. A large 
bazaar for the sale of low-priced goods, a work- 

T 



274 NOTES ON ENGLAND 

house to accommodate four hundred thousand persons, 
a prison for convicts condemned to penal servitude 
— such are the ideas created by the spectacle. One 
of these buildings is a rectangle of six stories, in 
each of which are forty windows ; it is there that, lit 
up by gas, amid the deafening noise of looms, thou- 
sands of workpeople, cabined, classified, immovable, 
mechanically drive their machines every day from 
morning to night ; can any form of existence be more 
opposed to, and at variance with, the natural instincts 
of man ? About six o'clock a bustling, noisy crowd 
pours from the mills into the streets ; men, women, 
and children flock along in the open air ; their clothes 
are filthy ; many of the children are bare-footed, the 
faces of all are pinched and gloomy ; several halt at 
the gin-palaces ; the others scatter and hasten towards 
their hovels. We follow them ; what wretched streets ! 
Through the half-open window may be seen a miserable 
room on the ground-floor, sometimes below the level of 
the damp pavement ; at the threshold a group of white, 
fat, and untidy children breathe the foul air of the 
street, 'less foul, however, than that of the room. A 
strip of carpet may be perceived, and clothes hung up 
to dry. We continue our walk in the direction of the 
suburbs; there, in a more open space, rows of small 
cheap houses have been erected as a speculation. The 
black street is paved with iron slag ; the low red-tiled 
roofs stand forth in lines against the prevailing grey 
sky ; yet each family dwells apart, and the fog it 
breathes is not too impure. These are the select, the 
happy few. And the time is summer, the finest season 
of the year ! One asks oneself what sort of life do 
they lead in winter, when the fog bathes, chokes, 
engulfs all nature, and one feels how heavily man is 



MANUFACTURES AND ARTISANS. 275 

oppressed by this pitiless climate and this industrial 
system. 

Drives and visits in the wealthy quarter. Here and 
at Liverpool, as at London, the English character is 
manifested in the buildings. The City man does his 
utmost to cast his city skin ; he strives to have his 
country seat and country surroundings at the outskirts ; 
he feels the necessity of being by himself — of feeling 
that he is alone, monarch of his family and his servants, 
of having around him a piece of park or a garden as 
a relaxation from the artificial life of tov/n and of busi- 
ness. Hence have been constructed vast silent streets 
in which there are no shops, and in which each house, 
surrounded by a patch of green, is detached and is 
occupied by a single family. In addition, beyond 
Manchester stretches Bowden — a sort of public villa, 
with the splendid park which Lord Stamford throws 
open for the enjoyment of the multitude, and in which 
there are magnificent trees, fine turf, and herds of tame 
deer lying amid the ferns. How one must enjoy the 
charm and the repose of these natural beauties after 
leaving the mill and the counting-house ! For there 
are no other beauties. Even a walk through the quarter 
of the rich is depressing. Ten, fifteen, twenty houses 
in succession have been built in the same style, and 
they succeed each other with the mechanical regularity 
of draughts on a draught-board. The trim lawns, the 
small gates, the painted fronts, the uniformity of the 
compartments, make one think of painted menageries, 
of neat play-things. The ornamentation shows bad 
taste, capitals, Grecian pillars, railings, Gothic roofs, 
and other forms have been copied from divers ages and 
places, the whole being fresh and inharmonious, ths 
display is ginger- bread and trumpery, like that of a 



276 NOTES ON ENGLAND 

man who, having suddenly become rich, bedizens, in 
the belief that he is adorning himself. It is a good 
thing to work, and it is a good thing to be wealthy ; 
but to work and be rich are not sufficient. 

They are powerful, that is their compensation. The 
life of one of the heads of these manufacturing or 
commercial houses may be likened to that of a minor, 
prince. They have the funds, the vast designs, the 
responsibility, the risks, the importance, and, it is said, 
the pride of a potentate. Like him they have their 
emissaries and representatives in the four quarters of 
the globe ; they are bound to keep themselves versed 
daily in the condition and resources of neighbouring 
and distant countries ; they have to control and satisfy 
a host of workpeople ; they have the power to become 
the benefactors of thousands of men; they are the 
generals and governors of human industry. A quarter 
of a million sterling, half a million sterling, these are 
the phrases one hears used with regard to their enter- 
prises, their sales or purchases, the freights in their 
ships, the goods in their warehouses. They despatch 
agents to examine particular districts of the globe; 
they discover outlets for commerce and markets for 
purchases in Japan, China, Australia, Egypt, and New 
Zealand ; they experiment about rearing sheep, grow- 
ing tea, or cultivating cotton in a new and untried 
country. This style of conducting business brings all 
the faculties into play. The warehouses of textile 
fabrics are Babylonian monuments, the front of one 
being 500 feet long, and the bales being raised by 
steam-power. A certain cotton mill contains 300,000 
spindles. A friend of mine, an engineer, informs me that 
authentic statistics show the profits of cotton- spinning 
in the Manchester district to have amounted during 



MANUFACTURES AND ARTISANS. 277 

two years to £20,000,000 monthly, and that at present 
the profit is as much as £8,000,000. We visited the 
establishments of Shaw and Piatt, the one a cotton- 
spinner, the other a manufacturer of spindles. Piatt 
makes 23,000 spindles weekly, and he has made as 
many as 35,000 ; he employs 4,800 workpeople, and 
does a business amounting to a million and a half 
annually, of which his profits in one year have been 
estimated at £200,000. On entering these workshops 
one is struck with amazement — the whole is a gigantic 
and ordered chaos, a labyrinth of wheels, gearing, re- 
volving leather bands, a living and moving structure, 
wherein from floor to ceiling and from story to story 
•work goes on at a giddy pace, as if the whole were an 
unwearied and indefatigable automaton. In a spacious 
shed, flame eighteen' forges, each flanked by two smaller 
ones ; a hive of workmen labours in the gloom inter- 
spersed with lurid flames. In Sharp's locomotive 
factory from seven to eight hundred workmen turn out 
an hundred locomotives annually, each worth £3,000. 
One must come here in order to learn the puissance of 
fire and water ; what we see are melting moulds, resem- 
bling trunks of trees ; slotting machines which tear off 
shreds of iron ; drilling machines which pierce holes 
through iron plates as thick as one's thumb as easily 
as through butter ; steam-hammers of 500 lbs. weight, 
which are so completely under control that they will 
crack a nut without crushing the kernel ; monster 
shears, gigantic forges. Eight men, ranged in a row, 
push a tree of red-hot iron, and as large as one's 
body, into one of these flaming furnaces. Here man is 
but an insect ; the host of machines alone attracts 
attention. 

When gazing upon these oddly-shapen creatures of 



278 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

steel, so laborious and industrious, amid tlie grindings 
and thunderings of their headlong speed, one recalls 
the subterranean dwarfs and giants of Scandinavian 
mythology, the deformed monsters who in mountain 
caves forged ornaments and armour for the gods. - At 
the present day they labour for the insect ; he is their 
master, and sometimes, on seeing the disproportion 
between the labourers and their head, one forgets on 
what terms he governs them. 



XXVI. 

MANCHESTER, AND LIVERPOOL. 

f\N examining a geological map, a large space, 
^ coloured black, is seen around Manchester ; this 
is the coal district. Towns spring up there like 
gigantic mushrooms; around Manchester there are 
seven or eight new ones with populations of from 
40,000 to 45,000 persons, such as Oldham, for in- 
stance, which I have just visited. My friend, the 
French engineer, informs me that 1,000 lbs. of coal 
cost from 5s. to 8s. here ; that the same quantity costs 
19s. 2d. at Paris ; at Bordeaux from 12s. 6d. to 15s. ; 
and in the department of the Vosges from 11. 8s. to 
11. 15s. Around Birmingham and Glasgow there are 
the same black marks and the same results. In 
addition there is clay suited for making bricks ; and 
here, as at London, there is a vast estuary, an outlet, 
the natural port of Liverpool, capable of holding entire 
fleets. Add to this a persevering and prolific labour- 
ing population, and you will realise this astounding 
collection of products, of human beings, and of build- 
ings. My friend adds two facts which, in his opinion, 
explain the prosperity of these vast establishments. 
On the one hand, the gross capital employed is enor- 
mous, and, in the industrial rivalrv of different nations 



28o NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

victory is always on the side of large battalions. On 
the other, the organisation is excellent, the workman 
is industrious, and faithfully copies the pattern placed 
before him ; the foreman is attentive, and is always at 
his post to the minute ; the machines are of superior 
■ quality, and the amount of work they will perform can 
be calculated with precision. Workmen, foremen, 
machines, clerks, representatives, all perform their 
duties with regularity and constancy, like a well- 
poised and well-lubricated wheel. The master spends 
four hours daily in his counting-house and workshop, 
supervising the whole ; that is enough. The disci- 
pline and harmonious action of his subordinates suffice 
for what remains. 

We started for Liverpool. Its name denotes an old 
pond, and, in truth, the flat damp country, bathed in 
sea-mist and covered with stagnant water, seems less 
adapted for men than for wild-duck. Now and then 
the land appears primeval ; untilled downs and sandy- 
bogs are to be seen ; the region, unenclosed, terminates 
at the horizon in a faint streak of pale verdure. Heavy 
violet- tinted clouds, exhalations of the sea and the soil, 
as in Holland, fill and dim the space which stretches 
beneath the low canopy of sky and the limitless plain. 
At the entrance to the city there is a huge Grecian 
building, a sort of temple with gilt panels, and pillars 
in imitation jasper, and serving as a concert-hall. In 
it a frightfully harsh-toned organ makes a din. On 
the opposite side, in front, is a library which cost 
£50,000, the legacy of a private individual. This is 
not the place to seek beauty and elegance. Liverpool 
is a giant, like Manchester ; the shops and warehouses 
are on a vast scale ; the streets are vast, and the houses 
which line them resemble those of London in being 



MANCHESTER AND LIVERPOOL, 281 

overladen with arcades, pillars, and pilasters, tlie eflfect 
produced on the beholder being an impression of crowd- 
ing and heaviness. The inhabitants number 500,000, 
and the port is the most frequented after that of 
London. 

Along the docks the cotton warehouses form a kind 
of cyclopian, endless and monotonous rampart ; nearly 
all the cotton of the world is housed here. But the 
appearance of the docks themselves effaces every- 
thing. The Mersey, as large as an arm of the sea, 
stretches towards the west, carrying vessels away and 
bearing them home. For a distance of six miles along 
its bank these vessels pass through canals into basins 
lined with stone, resembling watery streets and squares, 
multiplied and ramified, wherein they are repaired or 
discharge their cargoes. Their closely-packed masts 
appear like a forest in winter, extending as far as the 
eye can reach, and blocking up the entire horizon 
towards the north. Yet the spacious and numerous 
docks do not suffice to contain the multitude of ships ; 
they are crowded together in rows and masses at the 
entrances, awaiting their turn to pass in ; at Birken- 
head, on the opposite bank, new docks are being built 
for their accommodation. 

I believe this spectacle to be one of the grandest in 
the world. Some of the vessels are 3,500, others 4,000 
tons burden. A steamer is upwards of tJOO feet in 
length. A vessel at anchor, the Great Britain^ is about 
to carry 1,200 emigrants to Australia. If one descends 
the dry docks to the keels of the ships, one perceives 
that the hull is from forty to fifty feet in height. The 
swelling and copper-sheathed sides have the fine curves 
of a sea-bird about to slumber upon the waves. 

The view from Birkenhead commands the harbour, 



2 82 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

and the vast reach of the river; it is rather agi- 
tated, and gleams with yellow lustre, amid a slight 
haze. The steamboats ascend and descend, cross and 
re-cross, with stiff mechanical movements, like black 
crabs. Sailing ships, lightly heeling over, skim along 
like beautiful swans. The George^ a man-of-war carry- 
ing 86 guns, arrives in lordly style, all the others 
making way for her. On the other side the bound- 
less row of masts and rigging lines the sky, while the 
huge city is massed behind. 

We visit several workshops, among others, the es- 
tablishment of Messrs. Laird, the builders of iron ships. 
It is said that within the last thirty years they have 
built two hundred and fifty ; they employ fifteen hun- 
dred workpeople, have gigantic furnaces and machines, 
and have stocks, to which water is brought through 
canals. At present the hull of a paddle steamer is on 
the stocks, its length is 350 feet, and it is designed to 
make the passage between England and Ireland at the 
speed of twenty miles an hour. It will cost from 
£80,000 to £100,000, will be completed in six months ; 
the iron compartments which contain the eight boilers 
are composed of metal beams as large as a man's body. 

The same impression is always produced, that of 
hugeness. Yet do labour and power suffice to render a 

man happy ? M. B , a leading merchant, sits for 

three hours after dinner with his guests drinking port 
wine in silence. Another, whenever he can get away, 
rushes off to his country seat to brace up his nerves ; 
he is enthusiastic about breeding pigs. When man is 
dissatisfied with his lot he seeks for compensation in 
dream-land. I was shown a spot where four or five 
preachers — Methodists for the most part — come to 
address a crowd on Sunday in the open air; the idea 



MANCHESTER AND LIVERPOOL. 283 

©f tlie Kingdom of God, of the loving Chriet, of the 
all-powerful and tender friend, is one refuge for dis- 
tressed minds. 

Another refuge is intoxication. The authoress of a 
" Life for a Life '' writes : — " This Liverpool is an 
awful town for drinking. Other towns may be as bad ; 
statistics prove it ; but I know no place where intoxi- 
cation is so open and shameless. Not only in bye 
streets and foul courts, where one expects to see it, 
but everywhere. I never take a short railway journey 
in the after part of the day but I am liable to meet at 
least one drunken ' gentleman * snoozing in his first- 
class carriage ; or, in the second class, two or three 
drunken ' men,' singing, swearing, or pushed stupidly 
about by pale-faced wives. The sadness of the thing 
is that the wives do not seem to mind it, that every- 
body takes it quite as a matter of course. The * gentle- 
man,' often grey-haired, is but * merry,' as he is accus- 
tomed to be every night of his life ; the poor man 
has only * had a drop or two,' as all his comrades are in 
the habit of taking whenever they get the chance; 
they see no disgrace in it, so they laugh at him a bit, 
and humour him, and are quite ready to stand up for 
him against all incomers who may object to such a 
fellow-passenger. They don't ; nor do the women 
belonging to them, who are well-used to tolerate 
drunken sweethearts, and lead about and pacify 
drunken husbands." 

It is now six o'clock, and we return through the 
poorer quarter. What a sight ! In the vicinity of 
Leeds Street there are fifteen or twenty streets across 
which cords are stretched and covered with rags and 
linen, hung up to dry. Bands of children swarm on 
every flight of steps, five or six are clustered on each 



284 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

step, the eldest holding the smallest; their faces are 
pale, their light hair in disorder, their clothes are in 
tatters, they have neither shoes nor stockings, and they 
are all shockingly dirty ; their faces and hands appear- 
ing to be encrusted with dust and soot. Perhaps two 
hundred children romp and wallow in a single street. 
On nearer approach one sees one of the mothers and a 
grown-up sister, with little more covering than their 
chemises, crouching in the dusky passage. What in- 
teriors ! They contain a little piece of worn oil-cloth, 
sometimes a shell ornament, one or two plaster orna- 
ments ; in the one corner is seated the idiot grand- 
mother ; the wife is busied in mending the wretched 
rags of clothing, the children push each other about. 
The smell resembles that of an old rag- shop. The 
ground-floor of nearly every dwelling is a flagged and 
damp basement. Can one imagine what life in these 
cellars must be during winter ? Some of the younger 
children are still fresh and rosy, but their large blue eyes 
are painful to behold ; their good blood will deter- 
iorate ; as they grow older they will waste away, the 
flesh becoming flabby and of an unhealthy pallor ; many 
of their faces are scrofulous, being marked with small 
sores covered with plaister. As we proceed the crowd 
is more dense. Tall youths seated or half-crouching 
at the side of the pavement play with black cards. 
Old, bearded hags come out of the gin-shops ; their 
legs totter ; their dull looks and besotted smile are 
indescribable : it appears as if their features had been 
slowly eaten away by vitriol. The rags which they 
wear are falling to pieces, displaying their filthy skins ; 
these were once the fashionable dresses of fine ladies. 
A shocking detail is that these streets are built with 
regularity, and have a modern asj)ect ; probably this is a 



MANCHESTER AND LIVERPOOL. 285 

quarter modernised and rendered more airy by a bene- 
ficent municipality ; sucb, then, is the best that can be 
done for the poor. The uniform row of buildings and 
pavements borders the two sides of the way, inclosing 
in its mathematical lines this teeming heap of horrors 
and human wretchedness. The air is close and oppres- 
sive, the light wan and dim ; there is not a tint or 
a shape on which the eye can rest with pleasure ; 
Rembrandt's beggars were far better off in their pic- 
turesque holes. And I have not yet seen the Irish 
quarter ! The Irish abound here ; it is supposed they 
number 100,000 ; their quarter is the lowest circle of 
Hell. Not so, however ; there is a still worse and 
lower deep, particularly, I am informed, at Belfast, 
in Ireland, where, in the evening, on leaving the 
factories, girls without stockings, shoes, or shifts, in 
their grey working-dress, loiter on the pavement to 
add a few pence to their day's earnings. 



XXYII. 



ENGLISH WORKING MEN. 



AFTER careful observation, it appears to me that tlie 
types of workmen which are most prominent, and 
round which, the largest number of varieties may be 
grouped, are as follows : — 

First, the athletic and well-fed type. The trunk is 
square-set, the frame is huge, the breech enormous ; 
porter is said to be the agent in thus developing their 
muscles. These broad backs, brawny chests, massive 
shoulders, constitute a superb spectacle. Some of the 
men are giants of six feet and upwards. This type is 
most frequently met with in the iron manufactories ; 
a placid colossus may be there seen placing and turning 
monster pieces in the forge. My friends tell me that 
I shall, meet with still finer specimens in Yorkshire. 

Secondly, the phlegmatic ; this is found everywhere, 
but chiefly in the cotton mills, and, in truth, nearly 
all the faces blend into this type. The colour of those 
belonging to it is pale, their eyes are dull, their ex- 
pression is cold and fixed, their movements are correct, 
regular, and under control ; they expend no more than 
the minimum of exertion, and hence it is that they 
are first-rate workers, being mere machines adapted 
for guiding machinery. 



ENGLISH WORKING MEN. 287 

Frencli manufacturers tell me that in France a 
workman is very diligent during the first hour, less 
so during the second, still less so during the third, and 
so on in diminishing ratio, till he becomes good for 
nothing during the last. His muscular power gives 
way, and his attention becomes relaxed. Here, on the 
contrary, the workman labours as well during the last 
as during the first hour. Besides, his working day is 
but ten hours, while that of the French workman is 
twelve. As a consequence of his more uniform atten- 
tion, an Englishman can accomplish more work. In 
Shaw's mill, a man and two children are able to 
manage 2,400 spindles ; in France, two men and three 
or four — sometimes more — children are required to 
perform the same task. By way of compensation, the 
French workman is more neat-handed in some respects ; 
the weavers of the Yosges, for example, produce stuffs 
far neater and prettier than any produced in this 
country. The difference between the two races is 
always the same. The Frenchman appreciates and 
instinctively discovers harmony and elegance ; he has 
a taste for them. A Parisian ironmonger told me that, 
after the conclusion of the Treaty of Commerce, a 
quantity of English tools, such as files, awls, and 
planes, was imported into France. These tools were 
of good quality, the handles were solid, the blades 
excellent, their prices were moderate — nevertheless 
they were unsaleable. The Parisian workman exa- 
mined them, handled them, and ended by saying — 
"■ These don't please the eye ;" he never bought any. 
An excellence always engenders a defect, and recipro- 
cally. This delicacy of sense and these exigencies of 
the imagination hinder the French workman from 
being steady, persevering, unyielding, when tho task 



288 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

is monotonous ; lie does not understand how to tread 
tlie appointed round like a cart-horse ; he stops now 
and then, goes on at redoubled pace, becomes sick of 
his work, is tempted to try a new method, and to follow 
the bent of his fancy. 

How do the English workmen live, and what are 
their receipts and expenses ? On this head I possess 
recent statistical works — among others the work of 
Mr. Chadwick, but more especially the information 
given to me by engineering and manufacturing 
friends. In iron manufactories, the good workmen 
earn from 33s. to 36s. weekly ; the others from 15s. to 
20s. In cotton mills a man earns from 16s. to 28s. a 
week ; a woman, a young girl, or boy, from 7s. to 12s. ; 
thus, a wife and children help to swell the family 
earnings. It is estimated that the average wage in 
Lancashire is 20s. for an adult, and that he can live 
upon 10s. ; that if he have a wife and four children, 
he must expend 30s. ; and that in general his receipts 
and his expenses exactly balance each other. He swims 
on the top, and with difficulty; it is the skilled and 
superior workman who can alone command his price. 
The lot of the others is very hard when an accident, 
an illness, or a suspension of business occurs. Five 
causes of misery weigh upon them. 

Firstly, as the climate is very bad, they are obliged 
to expend much in coal, light, spirits, meat, and they 
have to wash and change their clothes at short in- 
tervals. In addition, workmen in general are thriftless, 
and the English workman in particular. At Oldham he 
takes four meals a day — tea, coffee, a bottle and a half 
of ale, butter, cheese, and has meat three times. At 
Manchester the working classes are notorious for 
getting the first of the early vegetables. Secondly, 



ENGLISH WORKING MEN 289 

as competition is very severe, each one is bound to 
labour to the utmost of his strength ; more exertion 
is required here than elsewhere to keep one's head 
above water ; at the slightest symptom of exhaustion 
one sinks to the bottom, and the bottom is truly 
terrible. Thirdly, they have children in droves — 
four, five, more frequently six and upwards. One of 
my friends knows families in which there are fifteen 
and eighteen. Count the cost of pregnancy, of the 
confinement, of the baby clothes, of the illnesses of 
the children and of the mother ; besides, a child has 
to be maintained, and earns nothing up to the age of 
ten years. If four survive out of the whole number, 
it is imperative either that the industry of the country 
should double itself every thirty years, or that one- 
half of the population should emigrate. Fourthly, 
under the rule of the industrial system dull seasons 
are inevitable. Sometimes you are deprived by a rival 
nation of a market upon which you counted ; some- 
limes it is closed by scarcity, war, or the changes of 
fashion. Add to this strikes, and hundreds of thou- 
sands of working men turned into the streets without 
work to do or food to eat. Fifthly, they are prone to 
drunkenness, and of all curses this is the most awful. 
The climate disposes them to it, because it is really 
needful for them to warm themselves, to cheer up, and 
to enjoy themselves, forgetting for the moment the 
gloom and strain of their lives. I have just read the 
annual reports made by a clergyman to a charitable 
society ; from this point of view they are tragical. 

The effect of these causes combined is that few 
workmen rise to be independent, becoming fundholders, 
or small shopkeepers. A person who is in constant 
association with them, and who has lived here for 

XJ 



2go NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

twenty-six years, calculates that the proportion of 
these fortunate ones is five in every hundred, or one in 
twenty. Most of the others die in hospitals, in work- 
houses, or are maintained in their old age by their 
children. As a rule, the industrial system deteriorates 
a population ; the population of Manchester, for in- 
stance, is more stunted than that of Oldham, a new 
town. As the majority of English workmen is 
engaged in manufactures, and as agriculture is here 
a manufacture also, it is necessary, if we would compare 
the average of happiness in France with the average 
of happiness in England, to contrast the life of an 
English working man with that of a French peasant. 
The latter is frugal, follows beaten paths, and moves 
within a narrow sphere ; yet he is nearly always 
possessor of a piece of land or on the way to acquire 
it, that is to say, capital in a tangible shape, a secure 
means of subsistence, which puts his mind at ease and 
over which he gloats in imagination ; moreover, the 
agricultural system and peasant culture are compatible 
with the most natural and the least constrained form 
of existence. By way of compensation, the English 
workman, especially in the cities, possesses more ideas 
and notions of all kinds, more ■ intelligence in social, 
political, and religious matters ; in short, his horizon 
is more extended. He hears important interests dis- 
cussed and the affairs of different countries ; he reads 
the newspapers, and collects curiosities. Recently an 
itinerant lecturer delivered two lectures on Macaulay 
here, the price of admission was Is. Qd., and the hall 
was filled with working men. In London gratuitous 
and public lectures on the utility of geology had to be 
established. There is another reason for development. 
A working man who is a unit in a large organisation 



EKQLISH WORKING MEN. 291 

feels how greatly he is dependent upon others, in con- 
sequence of this he associates with his comrades, and 

thus escapes from a life of isolation. A narrated 

to me the history of twenty-five working men who, 
having each saved thirty pounds sterling, formed an 
association some years ago in order to manufacture 
engines. For several months they had no orders. 
Taking counsel together they resolved to persevere and 
reduce the outgoings of each to 3s. M. weekly — that 
is to say, they fasted, they and their families. A cus- 
tomer appeared, became interested in them, bought an 
engine, and invited the public to come and see it ; the 
engine turned out very well, and their credit was thus 
secured ; they prospered, and, after giving them com- 
pensation, they expelled twelve of their number, who 
were not industrious or skilful enough, reorganising their 
society on a new basis. At first each one was manager 
in turn ; now, the most capable is chosen to be the 
permanent manager. He distributes several pounds 
annually in dividends, but devotes the greater portion 
of the profits to extend the business. The present 
value of the business is from £5,000 to £6,000. The 
labours of the manager are performed gratuitously, all 
the members work with their hands or superintend 
the workshops ; not one dreams about retiring and 
living in idleness on his gains. 

Visiting Oldham, we found the working men keeping 
holiday in honour of the society to which they belong. 
They walked in procession, carrying flags — on one 
flag, that of the brickmakers, were the portraits of the 
founders; in the centre was a luminous eye surrounded 
with mottoes, to the efiect that they asked for justice 
and nothing but justice. The excitement was great , 
women and children walked alongside, forming an 



292 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

escort. The women were neither pale nor slim ; tliey 
had fine plump naked arms, broad shoulders, ample 
bosoms ; their trunks were badly set up, but their 
frames were substantial; even the slender ones had 
powerful skeletons. They remained congregated out- 
side the doors while their husbands feasted within. 

Here, as in all the other manufacturing towns, the 
aim of the society is to keep wages at a certain level, 
and to increase them. All these societies are in corre- 
spondence, and have their head- office in London. When 
one of them goes on strike its members are maintained 
out of the local funds, and by the central funds also, 
should the central committee consider the object praise- 
worthy. To meet these expenses each workman sub- 
scribes a shilling weekly ; in addition he pledges him- 
self not to work for less than a particular wage. As 
compensation, during illness, or when work is slack, 
he is paid so much a day out of the common fund. 
Meetings are held once a week ; these meetings, as 
well as the regulations, are kept secret. The presidents, 
treasurers, and other officers, are elected ; their duties 
are performed gratuitously ; each workman fills one of 
the posts in turn. Thus constituted, these societies are 
very powerful ; their capital amounts to several millions 
of francs ; they have been able to continue strikes 
for six months, and even for a year, sometimes with 
success. Every workman who leaves the union, or 
refuses to join it, is regarded as a black sheep ; he is 
sent to Coventry, no one speaks to him, no one answers 
him, he is condemned to moral isolation. The result 
of investigations recently made has been to show that 
to these means of intimidation are added violence, 
sometimes robbery, and even murder ; a secret com- 
mittee, or kind of Yehm Gericht, pronounces and 



ENGLISH WORKING MEN. 293 

executes tlie sentence. Associations of this kind 
naturally lead to the establishment of a dictatorship. 
It is noteworthy that these societies do not lose sight 
of their special object. They have no other aim than 
the increase of wages, they never think of attacking 
the Government, as they would assuredly do in France. 
They are not political ; they are not even social ; they 
entertain no Utopian schemes, never dream about re- 
constituting society, suppressing interest, abolishing 
inheritance, equalising incomes, making the State a 
joint-stock company, in which every individual is a 
shareholder. Manufacturers tell me here that in this 
country there is nothing of that sort : *' Our working 
men do not generalise like yours; besides, they have a 
smattering of political economy ; above all, they have 
too much common sense to pursue chimeras. A strike 
is what we have to fear, and not a socialistic move- 
ment." I have just read a very fine novel written by 
a person who lived here, and who was an acute observer, 
"North and South,'' by the late Mrs. Gaskell, in 
which the character of a working man is depicted and 
the historj^ of a strike is narrated. If the portrait is 
as faithful as I believe it to be, then the men of that 
class are possessed of a large store of reason and fair- 
ness. They are perpetually at variance with the 
masters, but the struggle is restricted to the question 
of supply and demand. In this enclosed field each one 
is armed with the same weapon, the refusal to give or 
undertake employment, a refusal as hurtful to the one 
as to the other. Each one persists in his refusal in 
proportion to his courage and strength, the work- 
ing man fasting and the master being ruined ; 
thus the struggle is at once fair and lawful. While 
awaiting the result the law is respected, and there is 



294 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

no resort to force ; opinion is a neutral power whicli 
the working man must gain to his side by dis- 
playing wisdom and patience. Such is Higden's 

advice with regard to strikes. B tells me that 

he is acquainted with many working men who follow 
this line of conduct. They admit that a dispute 
between master and workman is a matter of private 
concern ; society may remain apart ; in any case, society 
has the right not to be disturbed by the strife, while 
master and workman have both their rights, the one to 
dispute about his price, the other to defend his interests 
in his own fashion. B engaged a skilled work- 
man at high wages for his manufactory in France, but 
did so subject to the condition that his wages would 
be diminished by one-half should he mention their 
amount to his new comrades. " I understand, sir," 
the workman replied, '*it is proper that the masters 
should make their own bargains." According to 

B , a French working man would not be able to 

forget himself in this way, and consider the matter 
coolly and abstractedly. Transported into an out-of- 
the-way village, this man has worked very hard ; his 
life is not lively, he does not know a word of French, 
and is unable to converse with his fellows. But he 
has his little son, with whom he diverts himself greatly. 

B sends him an English newspaper three times a 

week, and exchanges a few words with him when 
inspecting the manufactory. These things suffice for 
him ; he has lived more than a year in this way, silent 
and respected. 

JN^evertheless the situation has had its effect, and it 
cannot be denied that the workman regards his master 
as his natural enemy. The masters make very great 
and very praiseworthy efforts with a view to lessen this 



ENGLISH WORKING MEN 295 

feeling of hostility. They found or become trustees of 
savings-banks and of penny banks, in which the work- 
man may deposit his smallest saving. They build and 
let houses to them on a system which, through the 
operation of a sinking fund, enables the workmen to 
become owners of them after the lapse of a certain 
number of years. They establish ragged schools and 
mechanics* institutes. When the Queen paid a visit 
to Manchester, sixty thousand Sunday-school children 
were ranged before her, and sang " Gfod save the 
Qxieen." 

The masters are obliged to send to school for two 
hours daily all the children from twelve to fifteen 
years of age who work in their factories. The prin- 
ciple involved is at once a question of interest and 
'philanthropy ; all these institutions are designed to 
diminish improvidence, which is said to be the capital 
vice of the English working man. Here the animal 
nature is too strong ; the reasonable and reasoning 
faculty can with difficulty come to the surface. Its 
flame is smothered beneath the thick and heavy smoke 
of the instincts, nor does it flash forth spontaneously, 
keenly, lightly, as in the Southern races. It must be 
fanned, fed with suitable material, before it waxes 
strong enough to vanquish the gross matter which 
obscures it. When this occurs it is all-powerful ; but 
nowhere is the civilisation of the human being a matter 
more urgent and indispensable. 

We visited several establishments for instruction 
and public recreation. We went first to Peel's Park, 
a sort of large English garden, situated in the heart of 
the city, where the poor may seat themselves amid 
trees and flowers. It was founded by means of a 
private subscription amounting to £35,000, and in- 



296 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

eludes in addition a museum and a library. The 
museum contains a gallery of first-rate paintings and 
drawings, which, the owners have lent for six months ; 
a room of natural history, containing collections of 
birds, serpents, butterflies, &c. ; a room filled with old 
or foreign fabrics ; a room filled with industrial pro- 
ducts, such as cotton, hemp, madder — in short, an 
array of objects to instruct the mind and please the 
eye. Our guide, who was a leading merchant, said to 
us : " All these things address the senses, and do so in 
an interesting manner ; they all attract the working 
men, and impart ideas to them ; it is indeed necessary 
that they should have something to distract their 
thoughts ; moreover, every hour spent here is so much 
time abstracted from the public-house." He called 
our attention to the fact that there were no keepers in* 
the rooms, they being under the protection of public 
honesty and good sense ; not a single article has been 
stolen, injured, or even handled, and the average num- 
ber of daily visitors is 2,550. 

Thence we proceeded to the free library, also esta- 
blished by private subscription, and chiefly used 
by working men. It contains 25,000 volumes. The 
librarian said that there are 10,000 readers a month ; 
newspapers are to be found there also. "Whoever is 
introduced by two respectable persons may borrow 
books ; from 1,200 to 1,400 persons are regular bor- 
rowers. I learn from the register that the lives of 
Kelson and Wellington are chiefly in request, and that 
even theological works find readers. According to our 
guide, many of these working men are well informed, 
and make collections ; one was mentioned who knew 
the names and appearance of 900 species of beetles. 
Natural history and the natural sciences in general are 



1 



ENGLISH WORKING MEN, 297 

greatly to their liking ; they are fond of facts, and of 
proofs established by experiment, and are often led far 
beyond the Bible to the very depths of Positivism ; the 
Secularists get many recruits from among their num- 
ber. On the other hand, they read treatises on political 
economy, and newspapers; now English newspapers, 
even those of a small town, are instructive, filled with 
correspondence, with circumstantial and accurate in- 
formation. It seems to me that one of these working 
men, who does not drink, and who reads for an hour a 
day, must have a well-filled and healthy head. 

Another institution, the Mechanics' Institute, is also 
founded and maintained by subscription. It has six 
hundred pupils, both girls and boys, above the age of 
ten years. There are two sorts of classes : in the one, 
French, German, drawing, music, and mathematics are 
taught to pupils who pay a small fee, and who are 
generallj^ tradesmen's children. The other classes are 
free ; reading, writing, lineal drawing, and arithmetic 
are taught. Many factory boys and girls, in ragged 
clothes, attend them, being sent by their employers. The 
principal object of the instruction given is to impart a 
knowledge of lineal drawing and of mathematics ; 'vn 
the upper class, where the pupils are from thirteen to 
sixteen years of age, the sixth book of Euclid is 
taught ; it is necessary that they should understand 
their machines. Generally, the master appoints one of 
his class to act as monitor. There is a library adjoin- 
ing, containing a thousand volumes, and a room con- 
taining newspapers and reviews, which the pupils are 
allowed to read. At present there is one or more of 
these schools, specially adapted for the working class, 
in all the manufacturing towns, and the good results 
yielded by them are highly spoken of. The funda- 



298 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

mental maxim on which they have acted is, that unless 
a nation be educated it will become ungovernable. 
E-eligion aids them in this undertaking ; a Protestant 
must learn to read his Bible. Many schools are at- 
tached to the churches, more especially to Dissenting 
chapels ; as a general rule the church engenders the 
school. 

I infinitely admire the spirit of all these institutions, 
the generous initiative and sensible conduct of the 
private individuals who freely, and at their own cost, 
bestow a benefit on the public at large, and engage in 
affairs of State without State aid. Here large sums 
are usefully bestowed. To act by oneself, with purse 
or otherwise, to give the impetus and not wait till it 
has been given, is quite natural to them. Many bur- 
dens to which we submit they would deem insupport- 
able ; they have a horror of anything savouring of 
classification and the barrack. For instance, there are 
no compartments wherein passengers are herded to- 
gether at the railway stations ; they wait for the train 
on the platform. Luggage is not registered ; each one 
puts his luggage where he pleases, and finds it again if 
he can. Yesterday an omnibus was turned from its 
regular line of route into a side street to oblige two 
ladies who had obtained the consent of the passengers. 
Moreover, as it rained, the conductor permitted three 
persons in excess of the number to stand inside. Last 
Sunday, in a square, a poor fanatical wretch, a sort of 
bearded Bunyan, with an old hat and shabby surtout, 
mounted a post, the New Testament in his hand, and 
began to lecture : — " You see that the Apostles did not 
venture to bury our Lord, it was Nicodemus, a rich 
man and a gentleman, who did it, and this was neces- 
sary in order that the prophecy of St. John might be 



ENGLISH WORKING MEN 299 

fulfilled/' Thereupon Le read the prophecy. " Then 
you ought not to trust tradition, but believe in the 
Scriptures." He ended by offering up a prayer in a 
contrite tone, his eyes turned to heaven. His audience 
numbered about thirty ; several boys played tricks and 
threw his hat down, but five or six persons with stern 
or wasted countenances listened to him with attention. 
One of the hearers said to me that it was wrong to 
torment the man, that he neither offended nor insulted 
any one, that he had the right to speak as his con- 
science dictated. For my own part, what struck me 
was his seriousness and his courage ; he was unmoved 
by ridicule ; he went forward ; having something to 
say, he uttered it, and cared nothing for what 
might happen. Self-help is always the watchword, 
and is one little understood in France ; from the 
same interior source issue forth the societies, the 
institutions which abound here, among others the 
municipal institutions ; Manchester administers her 
own affairs, pays and appoints her police, governs her- 
self almost without the intervention of the Govern- 
ment. Consequently the social edifice rests upon 
thousands of independent columns, and not like ours, 
upon a single one ; accidents, catastrophes, like our 
revolutions of 1830, of 1848, of 1852, are impossible 
here. 



XXVIII. 



SCENES IN MANCHESTER. 



/^UH friend, the mercliant, took us to a large work- 
^ house outside the cit}^ There is another in the 
city containing 1,200 paupers ; this one, however, can 
accommodate 1,900, but at present it contains 350 only. 
It cost £75,000 ; the annual expenses of the two 
amount to £55,000 raised by the poor-rate ; the 
master's salary is £200, the doctor's £170. Each 
superintendent receives £20, exclusive of board, lodg- 
ing, and washing : a master shoemaker receives £1 
a week for teaching his trade. The guardians give 
their services gratuitously. The building is spacious, 
perfectly clean, well kept ; it has large courts, gardens 
are attached to it, looks upon fields and stately trees ; 
it has a chapel, and rooms of which the ceilings are 
twenty feet high. It is evident that the founders and 
managers had made it a matter of conscience to pro- 
duce a work which should be beautiful, correct, and 
useful. There is no smell anywhere ; the beds are 
almost white, and are furnished with figured coverlets ; 
the most aged and feeble women have white caps and 
new clothes. Everything has been considered and 
arranged to maintain a pleasing efiect. One room is 
set apart for the lunatics, another for the female idiots ; 



SCENES IN MANCHESTER. 301 

the latter do needle work for some hours daily ; during 
the period of recreation they dance together to the 
sounds of a fiddle. They make strange grimaces, yet 
they all seem healthy and not at all sad. In another 
room the children are taught their lessons, one of the 
elder children acting as monitor. The kitchen is 
monumental. Eight or ten cauldrons are set in solid 
masonr}% some to cook the oatmeal gruel, which is the 
principal article of food. The daily ration of each 
inmate consists of two pounds of this oatmeal and a 
pound and a half of potatoes ; four times a week the 
allowance is increased hj four ounces of pie or of meat 
without bone. The drink is water, except during ill- 
ness. We were astounded; this was a palace compared 
with the kennels in which the poor dwell. One of us 
seriously asked our friend to reserve a place for him 
here during his old age. Eecollect that a Manchester 
or Liverpool labourer can scarcely procure meat once 
a week by working ten hours a day ! Here an able- 
bodied pauper works about six hours, has newspapers, 
the Bible, and some good books and reviews to read, 
lives in a wholesome air, and enjoys the sight of trees. 
J^evertheless there is not an able-bodied inmate of this 
workhouse at this moment ; it is almost empty, and 
will not be filled till the winter. When a working 
man out of employment applies for help to the authori- 
ties he is commonly told, " Show us that you wish to 
work by entering the workhouse." Nine out of ten 
decline. Whence this dislike ? To-day at a street- 
corner I saw an old woman groping with her skinny 
hands in a heap of rubbish, and pulling out scraps of 
vegetables ; probably she v/ould not give up her drop 
of spirits. But what of the others? I am informed 
that they prefer their home and their freedom at any 



302 NOTES ON ENGLANL. 

price, that they cannot bear being shut up and sub- 
jected to discipline. They prefer to be free and to 
starve. But the children, these little ones, with their 
white skulls sprinkled with flaxen hair, crowded in a 
room around a pale mother ; how is their father able to 
witness such a spectacle ? He does support the sight ; 
he will not separate himself from those of his house- 
hold, abandon his position as head of the family, and 
be cabined alone in a compartment ; he thinks that, if 
he submitted to this, he would cease to be a man. The 
workhouse is regarded as a prison ; the poor consider 
it a point of honour not to go there. Perhaps it must 
be admitted that the system of administration is fool- 
ishly despotic and worrying, that is the fault of every 
administrative system ; the human being becomes a 
machine ; he is treated as if he were devoid of feeling, 
and insulted quite unconsciously. In " Our Mutual 
Friend,*' Dickens has depicted the distaste for the 
workhouse while siding with the poor, 

I spent the evening at Bellevue to see the popular 
amus^^ments. This is a sort of dancing hall, surrounded 
by a garden, in which there are shows, curiosities, 
trumpery works of art. The siege of Badajoz was 
represented on a stage ornamented with the portrait 
of Wellington, and this patriotic performance was 
greeted with loud applause. Shortly afterwards there 
were fireworks. In the gardens bands of working men 
and small shopkeepers ate and drank, and played at 
kiss-in-the-ring. Inside, in a spacious room, working 
men danced with great energy and vigour, but without 
indecency, and thus compensated themselves for the 
deprivation of exercise during the week. Many have 
a rough and surly air ; not one of them has an air of 
roguery and awagger. The athlete, the relation of the 



SCENES IN MANCHESTER. 303 

bull and the watch-dog, always appears instead of the 
witty rascal, the relation of the spaniel and the mon- 
key. The price of admission is a shilling ; the ball costs 
sixpence extra. As Bellevue is some little way off, 
being at the extremity of a quarter of the city, the 
expense of transport must be added ; indeed there were 
plenty of omnibuses and cabs at the gate. Reckon also 
the refreshments, and remember that, as the workman 
generally brings his sweetheart with him, he must pay 
for two. Now, a spinner's wage is about 23s. weekly. 

Such is a specimen of English extravagance. B 

says that a workman who earns 5s. a day often spends 
4s. on food and drink. Some of the men filling sub- 
ordinate posts in the iron factories can make as much 
in good years as £150, £200, and even £300. They 
expend the whole, and put nothing in the savings- 
bank. B maintains that an English workman 

who is industrious and thrifty, is certain, unless hin- 
dered by accident or illness, to prosper, or at least to 
gain a livelihood. But the people are not thrifty. 

From ten o'clock till midnight two policemen, whom 
our friends introduced to iis, led us through the dis- 
reputable quarters. There are six hundred policemen 
in Manchester, and each gets about 11. weekly. Those 
who went with us were detectives. One of them had 
been twenty-six years in Manchester; the other had 
been employed in several large towns. Both were 
serious, sensible, prudent men ; they made no parade 
of their talents, they spoke but little, and their answers 
were to the point. With their impassive countenance 
and their meditative expression, they inspired con- 
fidence and had an air of dignit}^ They corroborated 
what we had heard about tlie aversion of the poor for 
the workhouse ; in their opinion the workhouse itself 



304 NOTES ON ENGLAND, 

was good for notMng, and merely encouraged idleness. 
A family and three children can live npon 30s. a week ; 
and they make this amount. But most of the men 
marry young, often at eighteen ; at thirty they have 
six children ; they drink much and save nothing ; 
the wife becomes a bad housekeeper in becoming a 
good factory hand. As a rule, when a workman dies 
he does not leave enough to pay for his funeral. 

"We inspected the night lodging-houses, where, in a 
low and unventilated room, four to five hundred beds 
were occupied. A whole bed costs fivepence, the half 
twopence-halfpenny. A husband and wife were in on 3 
of the beds. The man's face was thin and pitiful — 
pallid, sallow, and sunken, as if by illness ; it had the 
look of an old mask in wax. In a casino we found 
five hundred persons, poverty-stricken in appearance, 
crowded on greasy seats in front of a platform whereon 
danced two slender girls in pink gauze. Twopence is 
the price of admission ; the company drank gin and 
smoked ; the atmosphere, loaded with human ex- 
halations, was suffocating. We entered a house of 
ill-fame. The policeman told us that its inmates are 
chiefly recruited from the factories. They were col- 
lected in a low room, and were decently clad ; many 
were thin, and their vulgar faces had a savage cast. 
Close to an oily mulatto woman, the pretty form of a 
young, delicate, and intelligent girl was pensively 
seated before a blazing fire. The season was July, 
yet a fire in the evenings is necessary. It was the 
same in the thieves' kitchen. We visited twenty or 
thirty of these haunts. A huge mass of coal was 
burning for cooking purposes and for drying clothes. 
The men smoked and played dominoes, and, without 
uttering a Avord, they gazed upon us with their fixed 



SCENES IN MANCHESTER. 305 

and gleaming wild-animal looking eyes. The effect of 
tlie flaring gaslight on these countenances was horrible. 
I have seen similar quarters and similar dens in Paris, 
Bordeaux, and Marseilles, but nowhere has the im- 
pression made been as strong. It resembles that pr-o- 
duced by a nightmare or one of Edgar Poe's tales. 
The gaslight does not wholly illumine the darkness of 
the heavy, choking air, impregnated with unknown 
exhalations; nothing is more startling than this black- 
ness dotted with flickering lights. The symmet- 
rical streets resemble the skeletons of streets m(>- 
chanically ranged in motionless rows. Unfortunates 
wearing soiled bonnets drag along their frippery and 
their smiles ; as they pass, one feels inclined, to start 
back as at the approach of a spectre or of a troubled 
spirit. Every ten minutes we enter a different den ; 
on our exit, the low room, blazing fire, flaring gas, the 
filthy band of haggard, beseeching, or dangerous faces, 
made us think about a vent-hole of Hell. Certainly the 
horrible and the unclean are worse here than else- 
where 



XXIX. 

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ENGLISH MIND. 

IT seems to me tliat I begin to -understand the form 
of tlie English mind, so different from that of the 
French mind. When I feel a notion of that sort 
dawning upon me I impart it to two or three English 
friends who have travelled ; I submit it to their judg- 
ment, we discuss it together ; at the close of the 
discussion the notion is corrected or developed, and 
such as it is I commit it to writing on the following 
day. 

The interior of an English head may not unaptly 
be likened to one of Murray's " Hand-books," which 
contains many facts and few ideas ; a quantity 
of useful and precise information, short statistical 
abridgments, numerous figures, correct and detailed 
maps, brief and dry historical notices, moral and 
profitable counsels in the guise of a preface, no view 
of the subject as a whole, none of the literary graces, 
a simple collection of well- authenticated documents, a 
convenient memorandum for personal guidance during 
a journey. A Frenchman requires that everything 
and every piece of writing should be cast in a pleasing 
form ; an Eiiglidhman is satisfied if the substance be 
useful. A Frenchman loves ideas in and for them- 



THE ENGLISH MIND. ^oi 

selves; an Englishman employs them as instruments 
of mnemonics or of prevision. I am about to cite two 
small facts which will serve as specimens. ' Stephenson, 
the great engineer, was asked how he had invented 
his machines, and the locomotive among others. He 
replied that it was due to a power of imagining and 
conceiving with the utmost precision the different 
parts, their forms, sizes, and connections, their possible 
movements, and the entire series of changes which the 
alteration of a part, a size, or of a connection would 
introduce into their combined working. Thus his 
mind resembled a workshop, in which all the articles 
were numbered and classified ; he took them in turn, 
arranged them, mentally set them going, and, by dint 
of trying, he hit upon the practical combination. As 
a contrast, Leon Foucault told me that, having one day 
discovered a proposition of speculative mechanics which 
Huyghens and Lagrange had overlooked, he worked 
it out to its final consequences, and these led him to 
the idea of his governor. Li general a Frenchman 
arrives at the comprehension of a thing by means of 
classifications and by the deductive method, while the 
Englishman does so by induction, by dint of concen- 
tration and remembrance, .thanks to the clear and 
persistent representation of a quantity of separate facts, 
by the indefinite accumulation of documents, either 
isolated or placed in juxtaposition. 

Bearing upon this point is a letter in Carlyle*s 
" Life of John Sterling,'^ with which I have always 
been struck. Sterling was at the Island of St. Yincent, 
in the West Indies, when he wrote it. A hurricane 
had devastated the island ; he and his wife, who was 
pregnant, had a narrow escape. He relates to his 
mother the story of what occurred. Note that the 



3o8 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

narrator is a man ot letters, and a poet, that lie has 
received a thorough education, and is a master of his 
native tongue. Yet in this case, as in all similar cases, 
the first care of an Englishman Is to transmit to 
another a true, an exact, and a graphic account. His 
description is a pure statement of facts : — " My dear 
Mother, .... Nearly all the property, both of Susan 
and myself — the very house we lived in — was suddenly 
destroyed by a visitation of Providence far more ter- 
rible than any I have ever witnessed. When Susan 
came from her room to breakfast, at eight o'clock, I 
pointed out to her the extraordinary height and 
violence of the surf, and the singular appearance of 
the clouds of heavy rain sweeping down the valleys 

before us A very few minutes after the closing 

of the windows I found that the shutters of Tyrrell's 
room, at the south and commonly the most sheltered 
end of the house, were giving way. I tried to tie 
them, and I found in pushing at the leaf of the 
shutter that the wind resisted more as if it had been a 
stone wall or a mass of iron than a mere current of air. 
The rain on my face and hands felt like so much small 
shot from a gun. There was great exertion necessary 
to shut the door of the house. About nine o'clock the 
panes of glass were smashed by the mere force of the 

gale, without anything having touched them 

The front windows were giving way with successive 
crashes, and the floor shook as you may have seen a 
carpet on a gusty day in London. I went into our 
bedroom, where I found Susan, Tyrrell, and a little 
coloured girl of seven or eight years old ; and I told 
them that we should probably not be alive in half an 
hour. The house was under two parallel roofs ; and 
the one next the sea, which sheltered the other, and 



THE ENGLISH MIND. 



309 



lis wlio were under the other, went off, I suppose about 
ten o'clock. After my old plan, I will give you a 
sketch, from which you may perceive how we were 
situated.''^ And, in fact, he draws a plan, or rather 
two geometrical plans, with letters and indications. 
" In plan No. \y a a are the windows that were first 
destroyed ; h went next ; my books were between the 
windows h and on the wall opposite to them. The lines 
c and d mark the directions of the two roofs ; e is the 
room in which we were, and 2 is a plan of it on a 
larger scale. Look now at 2 : <? is the bed ; c c the 
two wardrobes ; b the corner in which we were. I 
was sitting in an arm-chair, holding my wife; and 
Tyrrell and the little black child were close to us. We 
had given up all notion of surviving, and only waited 
the fall of the roof to perish together. Before long 
the roof went. Most of the materials, however, were 
carried clear away ; one of the large couples was 
caught on the bed-post marked ^, and held fast by the 
iron spike, while the end of it hung over our heads ; 
had the beam fallen an inch on either side of the bed- 
post it must necessarily have crushed us. The walls 
did not go with the roof; and we remained for half an 
hour, alternately praying to God, and watching them 
as they bent, creaked, and shivered before the storm. 
.... The old cook made &ye attempts to get to us, 
and four times he was blown down. The fifth time he, 
and the negro we first saw, reached the house. The 
space they had to traverse was not above twenty yards 
of level ground, if so much." The style continues to 
be the same to the end, correct, plain, and, in appear- 
ance, cold. It is the method of Defoe and of Swift ; 
nothing can be less literary or more instructive. 

The impression produced is the same if we consider 



310 NOTES ON ENGLAND, 

in turn the journals, tlie reviews, and the oratory of 
the two nations. The special correspondent of an 
English journal is a sort of photographer who for- 
wards proofs taken on the spot ; these are published 
untouched. Sometimes, indeed, there are discrepancies 
between the arguments in the leading articles and the 
statements in the letter. The latter are always ex- 
tremely lengthy and detailed; a Frenchman would 
abridge and lighten them. ; they leave on him a feeling 
of weariness ; the whole is a jumble ; it is a badly- 
hewn and unwieldy block. The editor of a French 
journal is bound to help his correspondent, to select 
from his materials what is essential, to pick out from 
the heap the three or four notable anecdotes, and to 
sum up the whole in a clear idea, embodied in a telling 
phrase. JSTor is the difference less perceptible if their 
great quarterlies and our reviews are contrasted. An 
article in ours, even an article on science or political 
economy, must possess an exordium, a peroration, a 
plan. Every one in the Revue des Deux Mondes com- 
mences with an exposition of general ideas. With 
them facts, figures, and technical details predominate ; 
their articles are exceedingly heavy, excepting in the 
hands of a Macaulay ; they are excellent quarries filled 
with solid but unshapen stones, requiring additional 
workmanship in order to fit them for general use. 
Moreover, in Parliament and public meetings, English 
eloquence is hampered by documents, while French 
eloquence evaporates in theories. 

English education tends to produce this result. 

In the principal school in London B had as 

a friend a very distinguished young man who had 
taken the second place in mathematics, the first in 
literature, who was thoroughly versed in Latin 



THE ENGLISH MIND. 7,1 1 

autiiors, and in Catullus among the rest. In Lis 
eyes Catullus was the most exquisite of poets. He 
knew every line by heart, was acquainted with the 
various readings, had studied the commentaries, and 
was almost qualified for producing an edition of this 
author. Yet, if asked to give a general view of him, 
to write a condensed sketch in six pages, he could 
not possibly do this, and he candidly acknowledged 
it. At Oxford and Cambridge studious undergradu- 
ates read all the Latin authors, even those of the 
silver age — Statins, Claudian, Manilius, Mncrobius, 
Aulus Gellius ; they are thoroughly versed in Greek 
also ; and they have made Greek verses from the time 
of leaving school. But they are devoid of ideas,^jthey 
know the dry bones of antiquity, but are unable to 
feel its spirit ; they do not picture to themselves its 
civilisation as a whole, the special characteristic of a 
southern and polytheistic spirit, the sentiments of an 
athlete, of a dialectician, of an artist. Look, for 
example, at Mr. Gladstone's extraordinary commen- 
taries on Homer. Nor has Mr. Grote, in his great 
" History of Greece," done anything more than write 
the history of constitutions and political debates. 
Twenty years ago the Universities were the nurseries 
of Greek, Latin, mathematics ; were very exclusive, 
and maintained the exclusiveness very strongly ; 
were extremely indisposed to afford free scope to 
human intelligence; the natural sciences, and philo- 
sophical history, and English composition were all 
uncultivated. Recently, however, new discoveries 
and continental methods of education have gained 
entrance ; still, even at this day, the system of edu- 
cation is better fitted for strengthening than for 
expanding the mind ; graduates leave the Univer- 



3 1 2 NOTES ON ENGLAND, 

sities as they leave a course of gymnastics, bringing 
away with them no conception whatever of man or 
the world. Besides, there is one ready made, and 
very acceptable, which a young man has no diflB.- 
culty in adopting. In France no fixed limit bounds 
his thoughts ; the Constitution, ten times altered, has 
no authority ; the religion is that of the Middle Ages ; 
the old forms are in discredit, the new are merely 
chalked out. From the age of sixteen he is assailed 
by doubt ; he oscillates ; if he has any brains, his 
most pressing need is to construct for himself a body 
of convictions, or at least of opinions. In England 
the mould is prepared ; the religion is almost rational, 
and the Constitution almost excellent ; awakening in- 
telligence there finds the broad lines of future beliefs 
already traced. The necessity for erecting a complete 
habitation is not felt; the utmost that appears want- 
ing relates to the enlargement of a Gothic window, 
the cleansing of a cellar, the repair of a staircase. 
English intellect, being less unsettled, less excited, 
is less active, because it has not scepticism for a 
spur. 

To the education of the youth and the young man, 
add that of the adult and the man of experience. 
In the first place, all written or spoken literature con- 
spires to famish the latter with facts rather than theo- 
ries ; I have already indicated the character of English 
journals, reviews, and oratory ; that of the books 
is like unto it, not of the solid works alone, but also 
of the novels, so full of details, so circumstantial, so life- 
like, these novels being in literature what Dutch art is 
in painting. It is also necessary to note and place in 
the foreground the travels which are the complement 
of education, the occupation of a holiday, a custom, a 



THE ENGLISH MIND. S : 3 

pletisure, almost an affectation, and, as a consequence, 
the taste for reading works of travel. Mr. Murray- 
paid Livingstone £9,000 for his travels ; judging from 
the price paid, one can imagine what the sale must 
have been, and from the sale one can estimate the 
curiosity of the public. In fine, it is necessary to take 
into account the experience of business, as it is here 
understood, the information which each person collects 
from reports of the proceedings, and from the meetings 
of the association to which he belongs, the figures, 
documents, statistics, and comparative tables which he 
must study and understand in order to act efficaciously 
and with success in the larger or smaller circle of his 
private or public interests. Through all these chan- 
nels, open from infancy to the close of life, exact infor- 
mation flows into an English head as into a reservoir. 
But the proximity of these waters does not yet suffice 
to explain their abundance ; there is a slope which, 
invites them, an innate disposition peculiar to the race 
— to wit, the liking for facts, the love of experiment, 
the instinct of induction, the longing for certitude. 
Whoever has studied their literature and their philo- 
sophy, from Shakespeare and Bacon to the presei>t 
day, knows that this inclination is hereditar}^, and 
appertains to the very character of their minds — ^imt 
it is bound up with their manner of comprehendii].g 
truth. According to them the tree must be judged by 
its fruit, and speculation proved by practice ; they do 
not value a truth unless it evokes useful applications. 
Beyond practical truths lie only vain chimeras. Such 
is man's condition ; a restricted sphere, capable of 
enlargement, but always walled in ; a sphere within 
which knowledge must be acquired, not for its own 
sake, but in order to act — science itself being valuable 



3,14 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

only to the office which verifies it and for the purpose 
which it serves. 

That being granted, it appears to me that the ordi- 
nary furnishing of an English head becomes discern- 
ible. As well as I can judge, an educated Englishman 
possesses a stock of facts three or four times in excess 
of that possessed by a Frenchman of corresponding 
position — at least in all that relates to language, geo- 
graphy, political and economical truths, and the per- 
sonal impressions gained in foreign parts by contact 
with men and living objects. On the other hand, it 
frequently happens that the Englishman turns his big 
trunk to less account than the Frenchman does his 
little bag. This is perceptible in many books and 
reviews ; the English writer, though very well in- 
formed, being limited in his range. Nothing is rarer 
among them than free and full play of the soaring and 
expanding intellect. Determined to be prudent, they 
drag their car along the ground over the beaten track ; 
with two or three exceptions, not one now makes 
readers think. More than once, when in England, 
after having conversed with a man, I was surprised at 
his store of knowledge, alike varied and sound, and 
also to find him so deficient in ideas. At this moment 
I can recall five or six who were so largely endowed 
as to be entitled to take general views. They paused, 
however, half way, arriving at no definite conclu- 
sion. They did not even experience a desire to co- 
ordinate their knowledge in a sort of system ; they 
possessed only partial and isolated ideas ; they did not 
feel either the inclination or the power to connect 
them together under a philosophical conception. Their 
language bears the best witness to this, it being 
eztremely difficult to translate somewhat lofty abstrac- 



THE ENGLISH MIND, 3 1 5 

tions into English. Compared witli French and, above 
all, with German, it is what Latin is to Greek. In 
French nothing is more natural than the formula, 
" the beautiful, the good, and the true ;'' if it be literally 
rendered in English, it has a repulsive and uncouth 
appearance ; if it be expressed in the common terms, 
the version becomes unfaithful. Their library of words 
is wanting in an entire row of compartments, namelj^ 
the upper ones ; they have no ideas wherewith to fill 
them. 

Some drawbacks and several advantages flow from 
this. General ideas are frames divided into compart- 
ments ; once they have been formed by the mind it is 
merely necessary to apply them in order at a glance to 
grasp a subject as a whole and in its parts. The conse- 
quence is that the mental processes are simplified and 
accelerated, and if the step be taken from speculation 
to practice, the power of organisation is facilitated. 
The word to '^ organise," which dates from the Revolu- 
tion and the First Empire, exactly summarises the 
faculties of the French mind, the success of well- 
ordered and distributive reason, the vast and happy 
effects of the art which consists in simplifying, classi- 
fying, subtracting. Thinkers of the eighteenth century 
cultivated it in their closets ; it was put in practice 
by their successors in active life who belonged to the 
Assembly and the Councils of State. Its memorials 
are the Civil Code, the University, the military, eccle- 
siastical and judicial organisations, our great admini- 
strative systems, the principal parts of our social 
machinery. Every nation which does not possess it is 
destitute also of its results. In place of a legal code, 
it will have a bundle of legal precedents, and, in place 
of a School of Law, Inns of Court governed by routine. 



3i6 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

T have heard the English lament many such deficien- 
cies. Their legislation is so shrouded in obscurity, 
that before they can purchase a piece of land, they 
must consult one or two lav/yers as a preliminary, who 
may occupy a month in examining the vendor's title, in 
order to determine whether the purchase will not give 

occasion for legal proceedings. C tells me that 

many of the Government Departments, and the Admi- 
ralty in particular, are in a sad state. Complaints are 
made of confusion, sinecures, expenses disproportioned 
to results, procrastination, and the clashing of authori- 
ties. The mechanism is in a muddle, because no prin- 
ciple has been followed in its construction. In all 
things they advance, and correct defects, only by grop- 
ing their way ; they gain a knowledge of affairs only 
by dint of attention, of toil, and of businesslike grind- 
ing ; they are as empirical in their procedure as the 
Chinese. 

On the other hand, when the acquisition of the 
power of generalising is easy and rapid, the mind runs 
the risk of becoming sluggish, and this is the case with 
the French. Frequently on leaving college, nearly 
always before they are five- and- twenty, they have 
learned to indulge in generalisations, and as they find 
them very handy, they apply them to all subjects ; 
thenceforward they cease to learn an5^thing, believing 
themselves to be sufficiently well stocked with informa- 
tion. They confine themselves to reasoning, and they 
often reason in a vacuum. They are not informed as 
to the point at issue, they have acquired no specific and 
conclusive facts ; they are unconscious of their short- 
comings, they never seek for what they require, and 
they retail the phrases of an old newspaper. They 
forget that it is necessary to be always versed in the 



THE ENGLISH MIND. 3 1 7 

things of the hour, to be always adding to the mental 
heap, so as never to be taken at unawares, and to be 
always ready for any event. JSTot only are mediocre 
minds among us tainted with this defect, but the very 
highest intellects are not exempt from the reproach ; 
I know but two who, having passed forty, continue 
their researches, and have succeeded in renewing their 
intellectual youth. On the contrary, according to 

C , the culture of the English is almost unlimited ; 

even in mature years they travel, gain new information, 
complete and rectify their acquirements ; they strive, 
especially in economic and political matters, to main- 
tain their views on a level with the fluctuations of 
things. They are pleased with facts as such, are satis- 
fied to note, and are careful to retain them. Accumu- 
lated in this wise, they form a continuous deposit at 
the bottom of the mind of an Englishman, constituting 
a solid stratum of good sense ; fo]-, disjointed and half 
visible though they be, yet they are there, they make 
their weight felt, they will influence the resolutions 
he may take. Even though limited in range and 
destitute of ideas, he will guard himself, as if by 
instinct, from committing very serious blunders ; he 
will vaguely feel that what is desirable lies on one 
side, not on the other. The scattered items of infor- 
mation he has collected about the United States, India, 
China, the effect of universal sufl'rage or of commercial 
freedom, will dispose him beforehand to adopt the 
wisest course, and free public discussion will end m. 
inclining him towards the most sensible conclusion. 
Thus fortified, he approves of an expedition like that 
to Abyssinia, while he would never have sanctioned 
an expedition like that to Mexico ; he desires the 
gradual extension of the sufirage, but would protest 



31 8 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

against the sudden enfranchisement of the mob. In 
this way he is protected against casualties and theories ; 
his constitution never falls into the hands of specu- 
lators, nor his affairs into the hands of desperadoes. 
Such are the effects of public good sense, resembling so 
many rivulets, which fertilise the several fields through 
which they flow. "VVe have beheld its fountain-head ; 
it is a deep and dark basin, constantly full, and con- 
stantly expanding with new additions — I mean of 
actual facts, which, accumulated and filtered drop by 
drop, form an inexhaustible reservoir, and spread 
themselves in an hundred small, salutary streams over 
the whole domain of action. 

When praising the fondness of the English for facts, 
it must be noted that this applies to ethical as well as 
physical facts, they are ardent observers of what 
passes within their minds as well as what passes with- 
out. On this head I happen to have in my hand two 
long letters addressed to a friend by two brides a month 
after their marriage. I regret that good taste forbids 
their publication. They both appear to have been 
written in order to show the innate custom and the 
inherited talent of accurate observation as applied by 
the one to material concerns, and by the other to ethi- 
cal facts. The one minutely describes her husband's 
person, his figure, the colour of his hair, his complexion, 
his country seat, the several rooms and their arrange- 
ment, the furniture, the park, the carriage drives, 
adding statistics of his income, the family connections, 
and the neighbours whom it is right to visit. The 
other develops as exactly and in detail all her states 
of feeling from the day when, at an archery meeting, 
she first met her future husband. Eoth conclude in 
almost the same terms: — ''And now, I am the hap- 



THE ENGLISH MIND. 319 

piest woman in tlie world." The one is commonplace, 
the other refined ; the one can use her eyes, the other 
can use her heart. JBut, in the delicate examination of 
the conscience, as in the heavy descriptive catalogue, 
there is the same lucidity and absence of fine writing. 
Nothing is recounted except iacts ; there are no general 
reflections ; in the psychological narrative and in the 
statistical exposition, everything is documentary. It 
is clear to me that their sole desire was to inform their 
correspondent, the one about her social status, the 
other about her private feelings, and that any addition 
or development would have appeared idle talk to both 
alike. In default of these letters, let the reader peruse 
the contemporary English novels, which are pervaded 
by the same spirit. They are compact packets of 
trivial material and ethical facts, the latter abounding, 
and often beiog of great value. JSTo other literature 
contains examples of sentiments more clearly set forth 
and elaborated, of the hidden labour whereby character 
is formed, of the gradual formation of a passion, a 
vice, or a virtue, of the insensible gradation whereby, 
year after year, the mind is moulded. The writers of 
these works have alone understood the infant, and the 
manner in which the infant becomes a man. In proof 
of this read the novels of George Eliot. Since the time 
of Locke, psychology has been indigenous in England ; 
it goes hand in hand with statistics and political 
economy. The two means for attaining a prevision 
almost correct, and an almost sure management of 
human affairs, are perfect acquaintance with all the 
external marks which betoken man, and an accurate 
divination of the inner marks which constitute man. 



XXX. 

FUENCH WIT AND ENGLISH HUMOUR. 

ON this rich soil flourish many original varieties of 
talent, all differing in aspect from what they have 
among us, the one sort being of larger growth, the 
other being stunted and distorted. Let me first speak 
of the variety of talent which is most commonly attri- 
buted to the French. I mean wit. This is the art 
of stating things in a pleasant way. My English 
friends think that it forms part of the French tempera- 
ment. Sir Henry Bulwer writes in his " France : 
Social, Literary, and Political '^ : — " I asked two little 
village boys, one seven the other eight years old, what 
they meant to be when they were men ? Says one, 
*I shall be the doctor of the village ;' ^ And you, what 
shall you be ? ' said I to the other ; * Oh ! if brother's 
a doctor, I'll be cure. He shall kill the people, and 
I'll bury them — so we shall have the whole village 
between us.' " At Besancon I once heard two soldiers 
who were lying on a slope talking together ; the one 
rising up said : *' Come, it is time to begin work 
again." His comrade answered, ** Pooh, lie quiet, our 
coppers will come all the same." A German general 
relates in his memoirs that after a day's skirmish a 
French hussar, who was brought in prisoner, had a 



FRENCH WIT AND ENGLISH HUMOUR. 321 

huge slash across his face. The general said, " Have 
you received a sabre cut, my poor fellow ? " " Pooh, 
I was shaved too closely this morning,^' was the reply. 
An ancient writer remarked that the two qualities 
most in fashion among the Gauls were courage and 
wit,* and his Latin sentence exactly defines the spirit 
of conversation, the talent for coining apothegms, the 
liking for short, sharp, neat, irbpromptu, and happy 
phrases, launched with gaiety or malice. Foreigners 
greatly admire this gift ; they say that it is accom- 
panied with taste, and that both of them are universal 
and developed among us. A little work-girl dresses 
well, has nice ways, and a pleasing address ; a soldier 
and a workman are wide awake, circumspect, prepos- 
sessing in appearance, and they can take and give a 
joke; this is the Southern '' ingegno,'^ spontaneous, 
easy, brilliant. That of the North is far more hampered 
and backward. In England a man belonging to the 
people is a lout, being a sensible lout at the best ; while 
the members of the lower middle class are but guys 
clad in gaudy apparel, a long course of training being 
necessary in order to refine them. Civilisation here is 
not natural, but acquired, and neither elegance, nor 
beauty is to be found except among the upper class. 
Among us a trace of it is perceptible in all classes, and 
that diffuses much pleasure and embellishment over 
human existence. 

So far as I can judge, the English do not know how 
to amuse themselves by means of conversation. A 
Frenchman accounts the happiest moment of his life 
the period after supper in the private society of well- 
educated and intelligent men. The brains of all pre- 

* Buas res industriosinsimi perscquitur gens Gallorum, rem miliiarem 
et argute loqw 

Y 



322 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

sent are then in a state of agitation and effervescence. 
They converse and think in unison about the most 
exalted subjects, skipping from one to another in 
short, j)ithy phrases, and their general ideas, briskly 
launched, flutter like a swarm of insects. In the space 
of two hours the untrammelled talk has made the tour 
of the globe. Each one contributes a condensation of 
his thoughts in a jesting or serious style, with exag- 
geration, a dash of paradox and play of fancy, without 
meaning his sallies to be literally interpreted, and 
seeking anything else than a relaxation for his mind. 
Philosophy, science, morals, art, literature, all the 
treasures of the human intellect are there handled, not 
in heavy ingots, or in large sacks, but in pretty port- 
able golden coins, beautifully engraved, and sparkling 
and jingling with a cheerful clink, as they are lightly 
manipulated by delicate fingers. It seems to me that 
these coins are rare in England, and that, in addition, 
they are not current. They are regarded as too thin ; 
their alloy gives rise to suspicions. Far more readi- 
ness is shown in handling the rough and ponderous 
metal of which I have already spoken. The conversa- 
tion indulged in is chiefly instructive ; most frequently 
there is no conversation at all. Several inconveniences 
arise from this, and tedium is one of them ; the mind 
wants entertainment. In Italy there are the opera 
and love-making, in Germany philosophy and music, 
in France the intellectual fireworks just described. 
Here, nothing is to be found except conscientious 
labour and useful production, assured and agreeable 
comfort. Happiness is not complete, however, when 
one enjoys a fine carriage, a well-appointed house, 
regular occupation, a seat in Parliament, and the pros- 
pect of a seat in Paradise; for amid all these good things, 



FRENCH WIT AND ENGLISH HUMOUR, 323 

there are times when one yawns and feels depressed. 
Then the luggage is got ready, one steps on board a 
steamer, and proceeds in quest of change, of something 
to distract one's thoughts, of a glimpse of the sun. 

As a compensation, the English make better after- 
dinner speeches than we do. Some of them may be 
read every week in the newspapers ; several are de- 
livered at every dinner where politicians, geographers, 
political economists, and men of science meet together ; 
at the dinners of the Corporation, at dinners given in 
honour of distinguished personages or of illustrious 
foreigners. I can recall one at which, although un- 
worthy of the honour, I was present in company of one 
of my French friends, a celebrated traveller. After 
dinner, the chairman first proposed the Queen's health, 
and then the healths in turn of several persons present, 
saying, '' I have the honour to propose the health of 
our eminent guest," so and so ; then added a few 
sentences of praise, uttering the whole with grave cor- 
diality, enlivened here and there with humour. For 
my part, I greatly admired the happy way in which 
he spoke, and especially the avoidance of what might 
weary his hearers. After the guest's health had been 
drunk, he rose and replied, '' I thank the gentlemen 
present and our worthy chairman for the flattering 
distinction," &c. Then followed some details, varying 
with the traveller's experience. The explorer of the 
JSTile promised to join the first expedition sent forth to 
discover the sources of that river. The Arctic traveller 
said that his capacity for wintering amid ice had been 
developed by the hardy system of English education, 
and by early devotion to field-sports. The colonist 
from Western Australia remarked that the place was 
well adapted for an English colony. Moreover, each 



324 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

gave vent to a little psBan over the energy of the Saxon 
race, the spread of English civilisation, the future of 
humanity, the advance of science. All present ap- 
plauded by beating the table with their knives or 
hands ; some cries of "hear, hear," were uttered; and 
one, two, three, four hurrahs were raised ; some stood 
on their chairs and saluted the speaker by raising their 
glasses ; the feeling of good-fellowship became conta- 
gious, and the excitement was at its height. To this 
rather loud orchestra the successive speeches formed 
appropriate solos ; the common-places of which they 
were composed were not misplaced ; they did not repel 
by their coarseness, weary by their heaviness, nor 
shock by their solemnity — at least, the English table- 
companions were attuned to the occasion. My friend, 
the French traveller, would not join in the chorus ; he 
whispered a request in the chairman's ear to be dis- 
pensed from making a speech. I asked him, " Why 
do you shirk your turn ?" Because either they would 
think what I should say was in bad taste, or else I 
should think so myself." He disliked spun- out sen- 
tences ; thinking it affectation to indulge in them, 
especially at dessert ; he preferred to launch a neat 
phrase, to carry on a jesting conversation with his 
neighbour, smilingly and in an undertone, to shadow 
forth his ideas. Here one does not hint a thing, but 
gives a detailed explanation ; one likes to have it 
developed and emphasized ; even at table one submits 
to the labour and burden of this. I suppose that they 
derive pleasure from having their nerves braced and 
their wills infiuenced by a collective excitement ; a 
dinner of this sort is akin to a meeting, and ends more 
or less formally in resolutions, subscriptions, in a pro- 
paganda and in action. 



FRENCH WIT AND ENGLISH HUMOUR. 325 

A slashing journal affirms that no one can speak 
French without tying ; the tongue exaggerates, " A 
thousand thanks/' " I am enchanted with it," " A 
charming man.'' It is forgotten, however, that the 
hearer takes off the necessary discount. The truth is, 
that our speech and our written style are filled with 
indications, half- expressed meanings, and nice distinc- 
tions. It seems to me that Lafontaine, Madame de 
Sevigne, Yoltaire, Montesquieu, and Courier cannot be 
perfectly translated into English. Their perfume 
evaporates, their grace fades, their vivacity becomes 
heavy. A reviewer lately found fault with E-enan's 
*' Vie de Jesus " on account of the '' beautiful am- 
biguous sentences which appeared to express a point 
delicately, and expressed two contradictory things." 
Many English do not understand these refinements, 
and they charge our literature with falsity because 
their literary sense is obtuse. We can reply to them, 
in turn, that they cannot discuss without threatening 
one another with their fists. Their literary disputes 
are conducted with extraordinary virulence ; in France 
the same style of discussion would lead to daily duels. 
Happily, they consider that duelling is absurd, and that 
no defamatory piece of writing justifies an appeal to 
arms. Their debates resemble their boxing-matches ; 
the combatants, having in turn mauled and knocked 
each other down, shake hands and bear no malice. 
After several months of reading of this kind, one 
becomes accustomed to it, and ends by finding that the 
plainness of the language is fully counterbalanced by 
the frankness of the accent, by the strength of the 
conviction, by the solidity of the reasoning, by the 
sincerity of the indignation, by the manly and sus- 
tained tone of the eloquence. It matters not if French 



3 2 3 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

wil be wanting ; they have a form of it for their own 
use, which is indeed far from agreeable, but is entirely 
original, is powerful, poignant, and even slightly bitter 
in taste, like their national beverages. They call it 
*' humour;'* generally it is the pleasantry of a man 
who, though joking, maintains his gravity. It abounds 
in the writings of Swift, Fielding, Sterne, Dickens, 
Thackeray, and Sydney Smith ; and in this particular 
the " Book of Snobs " and " Peter Plymley's Letters " 
are masterpieces. Much of it, more racy of the soil and 
rougher in quality, is to be found in Carlyle. Some- 
times it leads to buffoonery, sometimes to studied sar- 
casm., It powerfully affects the nerves, and becomes 
lastingly imprinted on the memory. It is the product 
of imaginative drollery, or ®f concentrated indignation. 
It delights in striking contrasts and in unexpected 
disguises. It clothes madness in the garments of 
reason, or reason in the garments of madness. Hein- 
rich Heine, Aristophanes, Pabelais, and Montesquieu, 
at times, are those out of England who have been most 
largely endowed with it. Still there is a foreign 
element which must be abstracted from the three last. 
French sprightliness, joy, gaiety is a kind of good 
wine only grown in the lands of the sun. In its insular 
and pure state it always leaves an after- taste of vinegar. 
The man who jests here is seldom kindly and is never 
happy ; he feels and forcibly censures the inequalities 
of life. This yields him no amusement, for he suffers 
inwardly and is irritated. In order to study oddities 
carefully, and deliberately sustain a piece of irony, it 
is necessary to be continuously affected by sadness and 
indignation. Perfect examples of this style must be 
sought for in the works of great writers, yet it is so 
indigenous that it is daily met with in ordinary con- 



FRENCH WIT AND ENGLISH HUMOUR. 327 

versation, in literature, in political discussions, and it 
is the current coin of Punch. The following is a 
specimen taken at random from an old number. It is 
a " Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury to a 
member of Parliament." *' House of Commons Library. 
— Dear Sir, — Lord P. has handed me the letter in 
which you inform him that the session is drawing to a 
close, that you have given to his lordship's polic}^ a 
support alike judicious and unceasing, and that your 
services merit a recompense in the shape of a place. 
In reply to your letter, I beg leave to remark that 
your first proposition is the only one about v/hich her 
Majesty's Government has the pleasure to agree with 
you ; and for my own part, I have the honour to be, 
dear sir, your very faithful and obedient servant." 

Do you like ale ? Drink it, your palate will become 
habituated to it ; as a beverage it is wholesome, and, 
on the whole,, strengthening. So is English humour. 



XXXT. 

ENGLISH PAINTINGS AND ENGLISFI PAINTERS. 

TT'ISITED tlie Kensington Museum, tlie JNTational 
* Grallery, and afterwards the Exhibition. All 
English art, both ancient and modern, is collected 
there ; moreover, I have seen two exhibitions at Paris 
of contemporary English paintings. No evidence is 
more abundant and instructive for exhibiting the tastes 
of the English mind as regards physical beauty, the 
following being the most conspicuous traits : 

Examples of high art painting, of nude figures, 
or of those draped in the classical or Italian style, are 
few and feeble ; there are some very artificial sacred 
pictures, and some large sentimental and historical, but 
unsubstantial productions, such as '* Edith and the 
Monks finding the Body of Harold," by Hilton, and 
the " Death of Greneral Wolfe," by West. The great 
and noble classical school of painting, the sentiment 
of a fine form as understood and loved, after the man- 
ner of the Revival, the correct and learned Paganism 
which David and M. Ingres have perpetuated in France, 
have never taken root among them. Their school is 
a branch of the Flemish School, a gnarled and stunted 
branch, which ends by dropping off, but in an entirely 
original manner. 

They descend from Yandyck, through Lely and 



PAINTINGS AND PAINTERS. 320 

Kneller. In the eighteenth century many of them, 
like Gainsborough and Reynolds, preserved a vivid 
sentiment of Flemish colouring and flesh in their great 
portraits and in their landscapes. They are men of 
the North who, following the Antwerp masters, persist 
in understanding the man, nature, and physical poetry 
of a humid country. Among Gainsborough's works 
are "Nancy Parsons," "Lady Dunstanville," the "Blue 
Boy," and other portraits, the " Watering Place," the 
" Market Cart," and sea pieces ; in these the carnations 
are soft and clear, the tones of the blue or pale yellow 
silk are smooth and blended, the whites of the creased 
collars harmonise with those of the face, the distances 
melt into indistinct vapour, relief is given to objects, 
not by precision of contour but by gradation of tint ; 
they gradually stand forth from the murky air. The 
artist is endued with all the riches, all the sadnesses, 
all the refined sensualities, all the penetrating and 
studied charms of colour. Among the works of 
Reynolds are "Miss Price," "Lady Elizabeth Forster," 
"Miss Boothby," " Georgina Spenser," "Duchess of 
Marlborough," "Marquis of Hastings," "Marquis of 
Rockingham," " Mrs. Stanhope," " Lord Heathfield," 
the "Banished Lord," the "Holy Family," the 
"Graces;" he belongs to the same school, and also in 
part to that of Rembrandt, only modernised. The 
excellent engravings in black style, wherein so many 
portraits of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
have been reproduced, also exhibit the Dutch sentiment 
of light and shade combined by masses of vague darks. 
There is something of Flemish colouring in Hogarth's 
pictures, less harsh and matter of fact than his engrav- 
ings, and the traces of it may also be found in Constable, 
"Wilkie, Lawrence, and Turner. 



330 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

But, from its very origin, the Englisli vigour pene- 
trated the Flemish surface, and made known its presence 
by effects more or less marked. The painter ceased to 
be a painter merely ; the soul, the thought, the invisible 
interior received as much of his attention as the living 
body itself; he soon gave the former the preference, 
and exhibited sometimes the moral tendency, sometimes 
the shade of melancholy, sometimes profound pensive 
reverie, sometimes the distinction of aristocratic haughti- 
ness. Gainsborough's *'Blue Boy'' already possesses 
the expressive and wholly modern physiognomy by 
which a work falling within the painter's province 
oversteps the limits of painting. His ^'Musidora" has 
such delicate feet and so intelligent a head that she is 
no simple girl bathing, but a lady. In the same way 
Bejmolds is a descendant, though a remote one, of Van- 
dyck, but he is so much refined and spiritualised as to 
appear to be separated from his ancestor by an entire 
world. His " Three Graces " have nothing artless and 
primitive about them ; we recognise that they are ladies 
by something stiff and patrician in their attitude and 
their appearance, and we vaguely feel that, in spite of 
being draped as goddesses, each of them possesses a 
carriage, a steward, and fifteen footmen in yellow stock- 
ings. His "Banished Lord" is a sentimental elegy, 
and after the manner of Young. His great noblemen 
are no longer easy-going and well-dressed cavaliers, 
who are equally ready for a combat or a ball, but are 
not good for anything else ; such simplicity of pure 
and genuine painting does not satisfy him ; he has set 
his wits to work, has sounded the depths of the inner 
man, has said to himself that "one never puts into 
another's head more than is contained in his own," and 
fortified bj? that reflection, he has pourtrayed reflecting 



PAINTINGS AND PAINTERS. 



3y 



souls. By degrees the mornl element becomes subordi- 
nated to the physical ; painting will be converted into 
a system of psychology ; the sensation of the eyes will 
be treated as an accessory, and the painted canvas will 
be but the foreground, a curtain behind which the 
intelligence and the soul perceive in the distance ideas, 
purposes, lessons, studies of character and of manners. 

Hogarth was the first who set forth this theory and 
put it in practice. According to him it is indispensable, 
in order to impart interest to a physical type, that it 
be the expression and the counterpart of a moral type. 
In fact, he treated painting as a moralising novelist, in 
the manner of Defoe and Richardson, and his pictures 
are sermons against vice. When we gaze upon them 
we forget the painting and become spectators of a 
tragedy or of a domestic comedy. Figures, coatumes, 
attitudes, all the accessories, are summaries of characters, 
biographical abridgments. They form a concerted series, 
they compose a progressive history, they are the illus- 
trations of a text half revealed ; under the surface, 
chapter by chapter, we read the text itself. Note in 
the "Marriage a la Mode" the sorrowing gesture of 
the old steward, who foresees the ruin of the house, and 
deprecates with uplifted hands the gross and sensual 
folly of the bridegroom. The mind follows the prece- 
dents and the consequences, comprehends their necessity, 
and arrives at a conclusion as after hearing a sermon. 
Less conclusive but not less literary in character are 
the works of Wilkie — the " Village Festival," the 
"Blind Fiddler," the "Parish Beadle," "Blindman's 
Buff," " A Wedding." He is a painter of humble life, 
a Teniers, if you will, but a reflecting, observing, think- 
ing Teniers, who is in quest of interesting types and 
moral maxims. His pictures abound in ingenious 



332 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

designs, liappy satires, instructive points, like Scott's 
" Antiquary '* and Eliot's '' Adam Bede." He furnislies 
matter for thought and amusement ; but outside the 
sphere of painting and around him many others are 
writers and poets, who have mistaken their vocation, as 
he has done. 

Among the artists who have gone astray. Turner is 
one of the greatest and the most mistaken. Nowhere 
can we more clearly discern the error of a man of talent, 
who, being qualified for addressing the senses, under- 
takes to address himself to the intelligence and the 
soul. The collection of his works fills three rooms. 
There are some very beautiful, simple, and imposing 
landscapes by him, wherein may be found a profound 
and, I venture to add, an exalted, appreciation of 
living nature, such as '' Knighton Bank," *' Frosty 
Morning,'' "Bligh Sands," '^ Cattle in Water," "St. 
Mawes, Cornwall;" but these are in his earliest style. 
By degrees the sensation of the eye, the optical efiect, 
appeared to him of secondary importance ; the emotions 
and reveries of the speculative and reasoning brain 
obtained the empire over him ; he felt a wish to paint 
gigantic, and philosophic, and humanitarian epics ; he 
believed himself to be the first of painters, and I have 
been told that he died insane. In any case, his paint- 
ing degenerated into lunacy, much in the same way as 
the prose and poetry of Yictor Hugo. " Apollo killing 
the Python," '' Snowstorm — Hannibal and his Army 
crossing the Alps," "The Deluge," "The Destruction 
of Sodom," "Light and Colour," "The Morning after 
the Deluge," "Rain, Steam, and Speed — the Great 
Western Railway," "A Snowstorm — Steamboat off a 
Harbour's Mouth," and thirty or forty others, care- 

lly collected by himself, and arranged according to 



PAINTINGS AND PAINTERS. 333 

his instructions in a place apart, compose an extra- 
ordinary jumble, a sort of churned foam, a wonderful 
litter in which shapes of every kind are buried. Place 
a man in a fog, in the midst of a storm, the sun in his 
eyes, and his head swimming, and depict, if you can, 
his impressions upon canvas ; — these are the gloomy 
visions, the vagueness, the delirium of an imagination 
which becomes deranged through overstraining. 

At the present day the centre of gravity which kept 
art in position has been displaced by the growing 
exaggeration of mental and. cerebral life. English 
painters have an affinity to the Dutch masters in some 
external particulars, by the small size of their canvases, 
by the choice of their subjects, by the taste for realit}^, 
by the exactness and minute treatment of details. But 
the spirit has changed, and their painting is no longer 
picturesque. Compare, for example, the animals of 
Potter with the carefully wrought and studied animals 
of Landseer, more particularly his deer and his dogs. 
The English painter does not love the animal for its 
own sake, as a living creature, nor yet on account of 
its form standing out in relief, or of its coloured 
shape harmonising with the surroundings ; he looks 
deeper; he has meditated, and he refines. He humanises 
his animals ; he has philosophic, moral, and sentimental 
ends in visw. He desires to suggest a reflection ; he 
acts the part of a fabulist. His painted scene is a 
species of enigma, of which the key is written below. 
For example, ''Peace and War," ''Dignity and Im- 
pudence,'^ "Low Life and High Life," "Alexander 
and Diogenes," a "Dialogue at Waterloo," are all 
explained by types and attitudes of dogs. The pro- 
cedure of the figure-painters is the same. In their 
opinion the essential thing is the anecdote, the little 



334 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

romance, tlie literary story, tlie aspect of mann-ers they 
take for their subject ; the charm, the harmony, the 
beauty of the outlines and the tones are ranked as 
accessories ; this applies to Maclise, Leslie, Hunt, and 
to one of the most famous among them, Mulready. I 
have seen twenty pictures by him — "First Love," the 
" Wolf and the Lamb/' " Open your mouth and shut 
your eyes," the "Battle Interrupted," the "Younger 
Brother," the " Vicar of Wakefield's Wife." Nothing 
could be more expressive, greater efforts have never 
been expended in addressing the mind through the 
medium of the senses, in giving a good illustration of 
an idea or of a truth, in collecting within the compass 
of twelve square inches a larger heap of psychological 
observations. What patient and penetrating critics ! 
What judges of man ! What a variety of skilful com- 
binations ! What aptitude for rendering the moral 
feeling by the physical appearance ! What capital 
vignettes they would make for an edition of Sterne, 
Goldsmith, Crabbe, Thackeraj^, and George Eliot. 
Here and there I perceive masterpieces in this style ; 
for instance, Johnson's " Lord and Lady Russell taking 
the Sacrament." Lord Russell is about to mount the 
scaffold, his wife looks him full in the face to see if he 
be reconciled with God. This ardent gaze of the w^fe 
and the Christian is admirable ; she is now at ease, and 
assured of her husband's salvation. Yet what a pity 
that, instead of using the pen, they have determined to 
employ the pencil ! . 



XXXII. 



MODERN PAINTERS AND RUSKIN S CRITICISMS. 



/^WINGf to the attention being wholly concentrated 
^ upon the moral element in man, the optical sensi- 
bility of English painters is blunted and unhinged. I 
do not think that paintings more displeasing to the eye 
have ever been produced. It is hard to imagine more 
crude effects, more exaggerated and violent colouring, 
more extreme and glaring dissonances, a falser and 
more abrupt commingling of tones. In Plunt's " Two 
Grentlemen of Yerona," blue-tinted trees stand forth 
against the brown earth and scarlet clothes ; '' Christ, 
the Light of the World," is set in a greenish-yellow 
atmosphere, resembling that perceived on ascending to 
the surface of turbid water after a plunge. In Millais' 
" Daughters of Noah leaving the Ark," the violet of 
the dress, and the manner in which it is relieved by its 
surroundings, is a thing to be seen. In Crowe's '' Pope 
presented to Dryden" are light blue waistcoats and red 
velvet coats, while the accessories are brought into full 
and harsh relief, apparently for a wager. Mulready's 
"Bathers" seem, to be made of porcelain. In the 
" Eve of St. Agnes " of Millais, a lady in a low-bodied | 

evening dress is represented through the medium of a 
studied effect of twilight, as having the appearance of 



33& NOTES ON ENGLAND, 

a corpse-like green, and tlie chamber is of the same 
hue. On every hand there are landscapes in which 
blood-red poppies are set in grass of the tint of a green 
parrot ; apple trees in blossom, whereof the staring 
white of the petals against the dark branches is painful 
to the sight ; a green churchyard in the sunlight, 
where each blade of grass shows its brightness like 
the blade of a penknife ; sunsets which might certainly 
be taken for displays of fireworks. Indeed, the con- 
dition of their retina is peculiar. In order to com- 
prehend this, recourse must be had to analogies, and 
they may be found in twenty details of daily life, in the 
red and violet, the lees of wine, the raw-green, tints with 
which their children's books are coloured, in the flaunt- 
ing and overdone dresses of their women, in the aspect 
of their meadows, their flowers, their landscapes beheld 
under a sudden gleam of sunshine. Perhaps it must be 
admitted that in every country the external appearances 
of things educate the eye, that its customs form its 
tastes, that there is a secret affinity between the 
arrangement of its artificial decorations and the colours 
of its natural sights. Here, in fact, the brilliancy, the 
freshness, the opulence of the style of dress recall the 
splendours, the youthfulness, fhe magnificence, the 
contrasts and appearaaces of the vegetation. Resem- 
blances may be detected between their mauve and violet 
silks and the changing colours of the distances and the 
clouds, between their gauze scarfs, their fleecy lace 
shawls, and the pale or splendid haze of their horizons. 
Yet a number of eflfects which are harmonious in nature, 
are displeasing when painted ; they are unfit for repre- 
sentation on canvas, at least they should not be repro- 
duced in all their nakedness. In the latter state they 
produce discord, in default o£ the surroundings with 



PAINTERS AND CRITICISMS. 317 

wliicli they harmonise. For nature has many resources 
at her disposal which are -wanting in painting — among 
others, the full sun, real light, the sparkle of daylight 
on water, the scintillation of sunbeams upon a green 
leaf. These are the supreme values which dominate all 
the others, and relieve them of their excessive crude- 
ness ; deprived of this atmosphere, the others produce 
as unpleasant an effect as a chord from which the leading 
note is omitted. They must, therefore, be transposed in 
order to be expressed. No painter, no artist, is a pure 
copyist. He invents, even while he confines him.self 
to translating ; for that which Nature executes through 
the medium of one system of means and values, he is 
obliged to render by another system of values and means. 
Herein is the mistake of contemporary English painters. 
They are faithful, but literally so. After seeing their 
country, it is obvious that the majority of their effects 
are truthful. This picture really represents a piece of 
English turf vivified by a recent shower. This other 
one represents the white morning sky ; the glittering 
sands at low water ; the bright green or violet hue of 
undulating waves. This one represents the ears of corn 
against the pale-yellow hue of the sheaves, the ruddy 
purple heaths under the sun on a lonely common. On 
reflection the exactitude of all this cannot be denied ; 
better still, we recall that the sight of the real land- 
scape gave pleasure, and we experience surprise at 
feeling dissatisfied in presence of the painted landscape. 
This is because the translation is nothing but a tran- 
scription. It is because, desiring to be faithful in one 
thing, they have misrepresented the whole. With the 
patience of fastidious workmen, they have put on can- 
vas one by one the unmodified sensations of their eyes. 
Meanwhile they meditated, moralised, following as 

z 



338 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

poets tlie soft or sad emotions whicli the real landscape 
awakened in their souls. Between the workman and 
the poet the artist has had no place. Their patience 
commands applause. We feel that we should be 
touched in the presence of the original ; their copj^, 
however, is but a memorandum, and we gladly turn 
aw^ay from it because it is ugly. 

A man has arisen among them to justify and elevate 
their practice into theory, namely John Kuskin ; an 
admirer and a friend of Turner, an earnest, impassioned, 
and original writer, perfectly competent, very studious, 
very popular, and possessing a thoroughly English 
intellect. Nothing is more precious than personal, 
independent, and well-ordered impressions, especially 
when, like his, they are boldly expressed ; they lead 
us to reconsider our own. There is no one to whom 
Ruskin's works, such as " Modern Painters,*' and the 
" Stones of Yenice," fail to suggest topics for thought. 
His first principle is that the literal truth and the 
characteristic detail must be loved with enthusiasm : 
" Every class of rock, earth, and cloud must be known 
by the painter with geologic and meteorologic accu- 
racy." " When there are things in the foreground 
of Salvator of which I cannot pronounce whether they 
be granite, or slate, or tufa, I affirm that there is in 
them neither harmonious union nor simple efiect, but 
simple monstrosity." Titian worked with the most 
laborious botanical fidelity. " Witness his ' Bacchus 
and Ariadne,' in which the foreground is occupied by 
the common blue iris, the aquilegia, and the wild rose." 
*'The foreground of Raffaelle's 'Miraculous Draught of 
Eishes ' is covered with plants of the common sea cole- 
wort." And all these plants are painted with scrupu- 
lous accuracy. But truth is only a means to produce 



PAINTERS AND CRITICISMS. 



339 



beauty : art goes farther still ; its proper object is to 
awaken lofty emotions. Nor is it satisfied with produc- 
ing sensible pleasure. '' This pleasure may well be the 
base of the impression, but it must also be combined 
with a feeling of joy, next with a feeling of love for the 
object painted, next with a perception of the bounty of 
a higher intelligence, and finally with an outburst of 
gratitude and veneration for this intelligence. No 
impression can in anywise be regarded as an impres- 
sion of beauty unless it be composed of these emotions ; 
in like manner we cannot say that we have an idea of 
a letter, if we only perceive its perfume without under- 
standing its contents and its purport.'' This is, indeed, 
the aesthetic system of a man of the North, an idealist 
and a Protestant, and all his judgments are in the same 
vein. He cares little for picturesque painting ; a sen- 
sation pleasing to the eye has no value for him. *' The 
old landscape painters only exhibited mechanical and 
technical qualities. I refer only to Claude, Gaspar 
Poussin, Salvator Rosa, Cuyp, Berghem, Both, Euys- 
dael, Hobbima, Teniers (in his landscapes), P. Potter, 
Canaletti, and the various Yan somethings and Bach 
somethings, more especially and malignantly those who 
have libelled the sea.'' ^' The object of the great body 
of the professed landscapists of the Dutch school is 
merely to display manual dexterities of one kind or 
another; and their effect on the public mind is so 
totally for evil, that though I do not deny the advan- 
tage an artist of real judgment may derive from the 
study of some of them, I conceive the best patronage 
that any monarch could possibly bestow upon the arts 
would be to collect the whole body of them into one 
gallery, and burn it to the ground." On this head many 
persons will hope that Mr Ptuskin may never bo 



340 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

appointed king under any pretext whatsoever. He is 
equally hard upon Italian painting, upon its spirit, 
upon its worship of the athletic and perfect human 
form. According to him, the mythological and nude 
subjects which compose one-half of it have been pro- 
duced in order to gratify sensuality, and take rank with 
opera ballets. In early times, " art was employed in 
the display of religious facts;" in Raffaelle's time 
*' religious facts were employed by him to give the 
display of art." "The crowned Queen- Yirgin of 
Perugino sank into a simple Italian mother in Raffaelle's 
' Madonna of the Chair.' " Was this, then, a healthy 
change ? No. It would have been healthy if it had 
been effected *' with a pure motive, and the new truths 
would have been precious if they had been sought for 

truth's sake He could think of the Madonna as 

an available subject for the display of transparent sha- 
dows, skilful tints, aud scientific foreshortenings — as a 
fair woman forming, if well painted, a pleasant piece of 
furniture for the corner of a boudoir, and best imagined 
by combination of the beauties of the prettiest conta- 

(llnas It was thus that Raffaelle thought of the 

Madonna." Shortly afterwards Mr. Euskin depicts 
with faith and awe the apparition of Jesus showing 
Himself to His disciples at the lake of Galilee ; and he 
contrasts Raffaelle's cartoon of the '' Charge to Peter" 
with the actual occurrence. ''Note the handsomely- 
curled hair and neatly-tied sandals of the men who had 
been out all night in the sea-mists and on the slimy 
decks. Note their convenient dresses for going 
a-fishing, with trains that lie a yard along the ground, 
and goodly fringes, all made to match— an apostolic 
fishing costume. Note how Peter especially (whose 
chief glory was in his wet coat girt about him and 



PAINTERS AND CRITICISMS. 311 

naked limbs) is enveloped in folds and fringes, so as to 

kneel and hold the kej^s with grace The whole 

group of the apostles, not round Christ, as they would 
have been naturally, but straggling away in a line, 
that they may all be shown." *' Beyond is a pleasant 
Italian landscape, full of villas and churches." " The 
simple truth is that the moment we look at the picture, 
we feel our belief of the whole thing taken away. . . . 
It is all a mere mythic absurdity, and faded decoction 
of fringes, muscular arms, and curly heads of Greek 

philosophers Whatever they could have fancied 

for themselves about the wild, strange, infinitely stern, 
infinitely tender, infinitely varied veracities of the life 
of Christ, was blotted out by the vapid fineries of 
Kafiiielle." It is easy to condemn a painter, even a 
very great one, when something is required of him 
whereof he never dreamt. Hafifaelle's design was to 
represent fine and serious men — well shaped, well 
posed, well grouped, well clad, and he never thought of 
doing anything else. Mr. Kuskin reproaches him for 
having represented St. Paul as a meditative Hercules, 
leaning upon a conqueror's sword, and he adds that no 
artist has yet painted the real St. Paul. Better is it 
that he has not been painted : ** the ugly little Jew," 
to use M. Penan's phrase, was beautiful as to his mind 
only, and his mind is in his Epistles. Paffaelle was 
right ; in contradistinction to literature, painting has 
the living body for its object, and does not depict the 
soul except indirectly and as an accessory. Mr. Puskin 
calls upon the latter art to perform the functions of the 
former. *' The principal object in the foreground of 
Turner's 'Building of Carthage,' is a group of children 
sailing toy boats." That, according to him, is one of 
the most elci^ated of thoughts, worthy of epic poetry, 



342 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

for these infants at play manifest tlie maritime aptitude 
and the future greatness of Carthage. On the contrary, 
" Claude, in subjects of the same kind, commonly 
introduces people carrying red trunks with iron locks 
about, and dwells with infantine delight on the lustre 
of the leather and the ornaments of the iron." What 
if the red suit and the burnish act as a sefc-off, as com- 
plements, as useful values for arresting, retaining, or 
preparing the vision, resembling the scale of a horn or 
hautboy in a symphony ; he who omits the scale has 
no ear ; can he who omits the burnish and the red 
have eyes ? 

Thus the fact, the actual thing, the material and 
physical object, is to be studied for its own sake, is to 
be placed intact and faithfully upon canvas, with its 
own physiognomy and all its detail, is to be so per- 
fectly rendered and framed that a special scientific man, 
botanist or geologist, will find a trustworthy record in 
the picture ; nothing being allowed for ornamentation, 
for the gratification of the senses, for the secret exigen- 
cies of the eye ; beyond that, and as a contrast, are 
the impressions of the moral personality, the silent 
communing of the soul with Nature, the dull and pro- 
longed re-echoing of a deep-seated ego, full of vibrating 
fibres, a great inner harp which responds with unlooked- 
for sounds to all exterior strokes ; such is the object of 
art. To them, this powerful ego is the principal person- 
age of the world. Unseen it dominates and encompasses 
the things which appear ; their worth consisting in hav- 
ing a meaning for it, in corresponding in some respects 
to it, in drawing out from or completing in it some 
latent emotion. The spiritual being is the centre to 
which the rest gravitates. To secure this leading place, 
it was essential that it should be extremelv strong and 



PAINT-ERS AND CRITICISAIS. 343 

absorbent. It is so, in trutli, and one perceives this 
upon considering the principal traits of the English 
character, the need of independence, the power of 
initiating, the energy and obstinacy of the will, the 
strength and ruggedness of the concentrated and con- 
trcHed passions, the rough but unheard working of the 
interior machinery, the vast and tragic spectacle which 
a compact soul furnishes to itself, the habit of intro- 
spection, the seriousness with which they have always 
regarded human destiny, their moral and religious pre- 
occupations, all the remains of faculties and instincts 
which were formerly displayed by the hand of Shake- 
speare and in the heart of the Puritans. Confining 
oneself to the moderns, one may say that in every 
Englishman there is a trace of Byron, "Wordsworth, 
and Carlyle — three minds entirely dissimilar, and yet 
resembling each other in a point which is at once a 
strength and a weakness, and which for lack of other 
terms I shall venture to style the hypertrophy of the 
ego. 



XXXIII. 

ENGLISH^ POETRY AND RELIGION. 

rpO a mind tlius attuned, the true medium of expres- 
-*- sion is poetry. In proportion as the English are 
inferior in the other arts, is their superiority in this 
one. To my thinking there is no poetry which equals 
theirs, which makes a stronger and sharper impression 
on the mind, of which the words are more charged with 
meaning, or which more faithfully reproduces the strug- 
gles and aims of the inner being, of which the grasp is 
more effective and firm, and which moves the indivi- 
dual and deep-seated fibres within us so as to draw forth 
from them such splendid and far-reaching harmonies. 
On this head it would occupy too much space were I to 
pass their literature in review ; I content myself with 
citing only one recent poem, *^ Aurora Leigh," by 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, an extraordinary work, 
which is also a masterpiece ; I repeat that space fails 
me in order that I may state, after having perused it 
twenty times, how beautiful I consider it to be. It 
contains the confession of a generous, heroic, and 
impassioned spirit, one superabour.ding in genius, of 
which the culture has been complete, of a philosopher 
and a poet dwelling amid the loftiest ideas, and sur- 
passing the elevation of her ideas by the nobility of her 



ENGLISH POETRY AND RELIGION 345 

instincts, wholly modern by her education, by her high- 
mindedness, by her daring, by the perpetual vibration 
of her strained sensibility, wound up to such a pitch 
that the slightest touch awakens in her a vast 
orchestra and the most wonderful symphony of con- 
cords. It is all soul, and the inward monologue, the 
sublime song of a young girl's and artist's great heart, 
attracted and irritated by an enthusiasm and a pride as 
strong as her own ; the sustained contrast of the mas- 
culine and feminine utterance, which, amid the out- 
bursts and the variations on the same theme, continually 
become separated and opposed in greater measure, till 
at last, suddenly combining, they unite in a prolonged, 
mournftil, and exquisite duo, of which the strain is so 
lofty and so penetrating as to be wholly unsurpassable. 
Formerly, an epic poem turned upon the foundation and 
destruction of cities, and the strife of- gods ; this one 
turns on the struggles of ideas and passions, on the 
transformations of characters ; its author having drawn 
her materials, not from the outer, but from the inner 
life ; and large though the epic framework is, the inner 
life is still ample enough to fill it. The vicissitudes of 
a soul so redundant and full of life are as important as 
the encounters of armies. In default of legends and 
divine apparitions, it has forecasts of the infinite, 
dreams and aspirations which comprise the world, a 
wild or luminous conception of beauty and of truth, its 
hell and its heaven, dazzling visions, ideal vistas which, 
unlike those of Homer, do not open upon a tradition, 
nor, like those of Dante, upon a dogma, but upon the 
highest peaks of modern ideas, in order to reunite at a 
still loftier eminence around a sanctuary and a God. 
There is nothing official in this God; he is the God of 
the soul, of a fervid and fruitful soul, in which poetry 



346 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

becomes piety, wliicli develops its noble instincts all 
around, and diffuses over infinite nature its sentiment 
of holy beauty. The wbole is set forth in a style 
almost unique, which is less a style than the most 
daring, most sincere, and most faithful notation, cre- 
ated at every moment and in every variety for the 
purpose, so that one never thinks about the words, 
beholding directly, and, as it were, face to face, the 
living thought leap forth with its quiverings, its sur- 
prises, its soarings suddenly checked, its unheard-of 
flights from sarcasm and familiarity up to ecstasy ; a 
strange language, but true down to the minutest 
details, the only one fitted for translating the heights 
and depths of the inner life, the approach, the arrival, 
and the turmoil of inspiration, the sudden concentra- 
tion of a crowd of ideas, the unexpected outburst of 
imagery, and the endless illuminations which, like the 
aurora borealis, successively flash forth in a lyrical 
imagination. 

" Never flinch, 
But still, unscrupulously epic, catch. 
Upon the hurning lava of a song, 
The full- veined, heaving, double-breasted age : 
That when the next shall come, the men of that 
May touch the impress with reverent hand, and say, 
' Behold — behold the paps we all have sucked ! 
This bosom seems to beat still, or at least 
It sets ours beating ; this is living art, 
Which thus presents and thus records true life.' " 

A style like that is the natural complement of such 
thoughts. 

" Let us think 
Of forms less, and the external. Trust the spirit, 
As sovran nature dees, to make the form; 
For otherwise we only imprison spirit 
And not embody. Inward' evermore 
To outward — so in life, and so in art, 
Which fctiU is Hfe." 



ENGLISH POETRY AND RELIGION. 347 

Poetry, thus understood, has but one personage, the 
inner being, and but one style, the cry of a triumphant 
or broken heart. 

The more I reflect upon this conformation of the 
English mind, on their habit of introspection, on the 
pre-eminence of the moral being, the necessity for 
regarding nature through the eyes of the moral being 
from first to last, the more clearly do I arrive at an 
understanding of the strong and innumerable roots of 
that serious poem which is here called religion. In 
order to comprehend with exactness its value and 
authority, it is essential to distinguish two things — on 
the one hand the wording of the editor, on the other 
the sentiment of the reader. 

This wording varies according to the views of the 
different sects — Quakers, Presbyterians, Wesley ans, 
Unitarians, Anglicans ; but that of the last is the most 
commonly accepted. And with reason, for the Church 
of England has on her side antiquity, her alliance with 
the State, her privileges, her endowments, her bishops 
seated in the House of Lords, her preponderance in the 
Universities, her mean position between two extremes, 
between the faith, the dogma, and the spirit of the 
Puritans, and the faith, the dogma, and the spirit of 
the Pom an Catholics. In the first place, she is an old 
and legal compromise, and this suits the majority, 
which everywhere loves compromises, willingly follows 
tradition, and is obedient to the law. Moreover, she is 
rich, she is a power in the State, she has ties among 
the aristocracy, she has good connections, she is one of 
the organs of the Constitution, and, in virtue of all 
these titles, she finds favour among statesmen, among 
Conservatives, among men of the world, among all 
those who wish to be considered '* respectable." To 



348 N^TES ON ENGLAND. 

crown all, her Prayer-Book is very beautiful, her ser- 
vices are noble and impressive, her conduct is semi- 
tolerant, she permits some play to the free judgment 
of the individual. Thus accredited, she proposes and 
imposes her version, and it may be said that this ver- 
sion is generally admitted. There are three distinct 
parties in this State Church : one, which is the more 
aristocratic, leans more upon authority, has the greater 
fondness for ritual, is called the High Church ; the 
other, which is more popular, more ardent, more eager 
to make conversions and renovate the heart, is called 
the Low Church party. Both of them, being rather 
narrow and inflexible, leave scope for the operations of 
a Liberal party, the Broad Church, which includes the 
minds that are the most eminent and conciliatory, 
and the best qualified for reconciling science and faith. 
Thanks to the lattef* party, the gulf which separates 
lay thought from ecclesiastical tradition has ceased to 
be impassable. 

Among several other polemic and dogmatic treatises, 
I have just read Alford's '' Greek Testament," one of 
the most authorised commentaries on the Scriptures. 
He does not go so far as the German critics ; his his- 
torical judgment is burdened by foregone conclusions, 
yet his concessions are sufficiently large to satisfy com- 
mon sense. According to him the Evangelists are not 
in perfect accord ; sometimes even, more especially as 
regards chronology, they contradict each other. " This 
is because they were not mere speaking-trumpets, 
channels of the Holy Ghost, but simple, holy men in- 
spired by it." They had common materials from which 
to write, to wit, tradition and some imperfect texts, 
but these materials were *' subject to all the varieties of 
diction, arrangement, omission, and addition which a 



ENGLISH POETRY AND RELIGION. 349 

narrative admits of when it is the offspring of several 
individual minds and several different places." Each 
narrator, according to the nature, th^ defects, and the 
compass of his information, his memorj^, his imagina- 
tion, and his sentiment, left his mark upon it. The 
whole is true, but it is true as a whole only. ]S"ow, 
between the divine kernel and the human covering, 
the dividing point is not clear ; each person may cut 
off more or less, and even in the Church itself many 
persons cut off a large portion. According to Dean 
Stanley, being a Christian does not consist in believing 
in particular events in the life of Jesus, in particular 
dogmas revealed by Jesus, but in Jesus Himself, in the 
moral and religious sj^irit with which the Gospels are 
inspired. He explains the gift of tongues in the same 
way as M. E-enan. He admits, like the German theo- 
logians, that the Gospels, such as ^e have them, were 
composed long after the Epistles of St. Paul. His 
comments on these Epistles are in the style of modern 
criticism, being marked by the details, the judgment, 
the independent and piercing forecasts which now-a- 
days distinguish a commentary on Dante or Pascal. 
He depicts Corinth, with its sea and its temples, after 
Pausanias, after the reports of travellers, after the ex- 
perience of his own travels. He exhibits St. Paul dic- 
tating to Sosthenes, a disciple who sits beside him, and 
who stops every now and then to remind him of an 
omission. " We can imagine that the letter to which 
St. Paul replied was unrolled before him 'vn such a 
manner that he could see at a glance the difficulties 
suggested, raise objections in turn, sometimes citing 
them in the very words employed, and sometimes in 
his own language." He effectively describes and ex- 
plains St. Paul's style, a style as powerful and wonder- 



350 NOTES ON ENQLAND 

ful as the matter itself; a style jerky and forced, owing 
to the interior emotion, wholly composed of outbursts 
or of rough fragments of burning thoughts leaping 
and clashing like pieces of lava amid flame and smoke ; 
he likens it in some respects to that of Thucydides, 
better still to that of Cromwell. He shows the Helsraic 
temperament and the Oriental imagination of the 
Apostle, apropos of which he recalls the state of mind 
characteristic of the Prophets and the Psalmists, and 
he goes the length of pointing out the relics of a 
similar form of mental exaltation among the Maho- 
metan dervishes. In short, according to him, in order 
to understand the era of the Evangelists it is neces- 
sary above all to form a conception of enthusiasts and 
of the scenes of enthusiasm such as formerly occurred 
among the Puritans, and may now be found in the 
*' shoutings " of America. Mr. Jowett carries criti- 
cism farther still. When reading the New Testa- 
ment he puts the common version on one side, 
and takes that of Lachmann, the first being to the 
second what the Sophocles and Thucydides of the 
Revival are to those of Dindorf and of Becker, or 
what the " Pensees " of Pascal, published by the Port- 
Poyal, are to the same '^ Pensees " edited by M. Feu- 
gere. The faith of the early Christians did not 
exactly resemble ours. " They believed that the end 
of the world and the second coming of Christ were at 
hand ;" transported with their conversion they lived 
in a species of ''ecstasy;" their faith was simple and 
child-like, *'it was the belief of men who did not try 
to penetrate the designs of Providence, and who had 
never dreamed about the perspectives of the future ; 
it was the sentiment of men who thought about the 
coming of Christ as we think about the return of a 



ENGLISH POETRY AND RELIGION. 351 

lost friend, many of them having seen him upon earth, 
and being unable to believe that he had been taken 
away for ever." Regarding the outside only, and from 
the world's point of view, they left the impression 
which would now be made by a sect of Dissenters, 
poor dreamers whom the men of the world would con- 
sider fanatical, narrow-minded, eccentric, and even 
dangerous. Their language bears marks of their 
mental disposition. The words justice, faith, charity 
are much more vague as used by St. Paul than by us ; 
they correspond to a more excited frame of mind, to a 
less definite play of ideas. When he says that Adam's 
sin is imputed to us, he is moved by an outburst of 
passion, he writes in the style of the Hebrews ; this 
merely means ** that we are all as one man by the com- 
munity of our evil nature,'^ and by this community, 
and not otherwise, are we all united in Adam's trans- 
gression. The excitement and the imagination of the 
Apostle and the Oriental are manifested by his fre- 
quent use of " very nearly," and his figures of speech 
are not formulas. When he speaks of redemption and 
sin ofiering, he alludes to a Jewish custom. Between 
this stormy and inspired spirit, which comes out of the 
Synagogue, speaks in ejaculations, thinks in blocks, 
and the lucid, exact, discursive modern intellect, which 
separates and follows, one by one, the mass of precise 
ideas, the difierence is enormous. It would be absurd, 
and horrible in addition, to elevate local metaphors 
into philosophical doctrines. The reader sees for him- 
self the consequence of principles like these — to wit, 
the advent of philology, of criticism, of psychology, 
the renovation of theolog}-, the transfiguration of 
dogma. The effect of this is visible already. Distin- 
guished mon, historians, clergymen, have resigned 



352 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

their positions in the University and in the Church 
because their consciences no longer assented to the 
Thirty-nine Articles. Bishop Colenso, of ISTatal, when 
questioned by converts about the Old Testament, and 
asked to pledge his word of honour that it was all true, 
fell into deep reflection, began to study the subject, 
read the German explanations, and ended by publish- 
ing a book which relegated the Biblical stories to the 
rank of myths. One of my friends, who is very well 
informed, estimates that out of twenty-four bishops 
there are four who favour the liberal criticisms ema- 
nating from Oxford ; moreover, these find support 
among a large number of influential and respected 
laymen, who approve of them. The modern spirit 
filters through other fissures — by geolog}^ and natural 
history — for which the English have great apti- 
tude, by the experimental psychology which they 
have always cultivated. In trutli, an Englishman 
chiefly loves demonstrated facts, either external or in- 
ternal — the incontestable and existing facts of which 
every one can at any moment gain experience either 
within him or without. This disposition may give 
birth to theories and even to a system of philosophy, 
to theories like those of Lyell, of Huxley, of Darv/in, 
and of Tyndall, to a philosophy like that of J. S. Mill 
and Herbert Spencer. Where such a taste predo- 
minates, it leads the mind towards one of the forms 
of positivism, and indeed, under diverse forms, espe- 
cially among men of science, positivism is no rarity 
here. 

Among contemporary nations, among the French, 
for instance, these things, in diflerent proportions, are 
very much alike. There, too, we find a symbol, a text 
accepted by the majority, comprehensive or narrow in- 



_ ■ ENGLISH POETRY AND RELIGION. ^53 

terpretations admitted by several small groups, a scien- 
tific scepticism to suit some free-thinkers and several 
men of science who devote themselves to a special pur- 
suit. In all these things the points of resemblance are. 
striking, but they are merely superficial. The inner 
emotion remains to be considered, the attitude of the 
reader in presence of the accepted symbol ; it is in 
this particular that the two nations differ irreconcile- 
ably. An Englishman is naturally influenced by the 
sentiment of the far-beyond. For him, beyond human 
experience prolonged as far as it is possible to imagine, 
there is an abyss, a vast we know not what, whether 
blankness or brilliancy ; and in this matter the most 
determined votaries of pure experience are at one with 
the believers. Beyond attainable things Herbert Spencer 
expressly places something unattainable, the " unknow- 
able,'' the infinite basis, whereof we can touch but a 
portion and the surface. If J. S. Mill dare not affirm 
this infinity which oversteps all limits, he at least 
admits it as a possibility. An. expanse of darkness, 
empty or peopled, enveloping the narrow circle wherein 
flickers our little lamp, such is the common impression 
made upon the sceptics as well as upon the faithful by 
the spectacle of things. Such an impression puts the 
mind in a solemn attitude ; it does not proceed without 
a tincture of terror ; the human being is in presence of 
an incommensurate and overwhelming spectacle ; he is 
inclined to wonder and awe. As he is reflecting, pror.e 
to moralise, he has no difficulty in recognising tiie far- 
beyond in the moral, as in the material world. He 
speedily feels that his power is limited, his vaticination 
short, his undertakings uncertain, that he resembles a 
leaf carried away in a vast and angry current. During 
days of sorrow, at the funerals of his relations, in sick- 

A A 



354 NOTES OIV ENGLAND. 

ness or in peril, wlien his dependence and ignorance 
stand before liim in sharp and dread outlines, this emo- 
tion becomes poignant. He turns his eyes towards the 
great universal movement, towards the obscure and 
imposing government of the whole. By dint of medi- 
tating, he tries to image it to himself, and, in default 
of another image, he pictures it as the government of 
some one, as the result of an intelligent and deter- 
minate guidance, as the work of a power and a mind to 
which nothing is wanting of those things in which he 
himself is deficient. Yet another step. If, amidst the 
imperfections he discovers in himself, the gravest in his 
eyes are his evil inclinations, if he is chiefly concerned 
with ideas about the just and the unjust, if his con- 
science is awake and active, the primitive emotion 
guided, rendered clear, and completed, terminates in 
the conception of a moral Deity. Thomas Arnold 
wrote to a person troubled with doubt, " Begin by re- 
garding everything from the moral point of view, and 
you will end by believing in God." Upon the struc- 
ture thus reared, at the summit of all these converging 
pillars, this belief comes of itself and takes its place 
there as the kej^stone of the arch. The mysterious, 
the infinite, the far-beyond, becomes the mysterious 
Providence, and the texts of Scripture and tlie Liturgy 
are simply mediums for expressing the inarticulate 
yearning of the heart. 

Such is the soundless preparation, the inner ferment, 
whereby the conception of God is formed and deve- 
loped. The child receives it from without like a graft. 
But, in order that this graft should take hold, and 
should not remain a piece of dead matter in the mind, 
it is necessary that the mind should adapt itself, and 
cling to it and impart its sap to it. This is not per- 



ENGLISH POETRY AND RELIGION. 35^ 

formed but after tedious, hidden, and unconscious 
labour. It ordinarily takes years for the junction to be 
made and the foreign cutting to become transformed into 
an acquired branch. As far as I can judge, this is done 
naturally and successfully in an English mind, accord- 
ing to the process I have described, by the conception 
of the infinite powers which overwhelm us, by the con- 
centration of these shadowy powers in one person, and 
by the installation of this personage on the throne of 
the moral world. In this manner religion ceases to be 
an official formula which men repeat, and becomes a 
living sentiment which men feel. In order to be con- 
vinced of this the reader has but to study the details 
of daily life in the correspondence, in the biographies, 
in the poems, in the romances, in all the spontaneous 
evidences which cannot be suspected of hypocrisy. 
Some time ago the newspapers published a letter which 
a poor sergeant, slain at Petropaulowski, wrote to his 
wife Alice, on the eve of the engagement ; nothing 
could be nobler, more touching, more profoundly ear- 
nest ; it was the testament of a soul. Among three 
novels taken at random there are two in which at a 
momentous crisis we perceive the intervention if not of 
prayer at least of the solemn emotion of the human 
being who feels that above his own head and every 
head reigns infinite Justice. The doctrine may be dis- 
cussed ; in presence of the sentiment itself we can but 
bow the head j it is sublime. 



I 



XXXIY. 

A TRIP THROUGH SCOTLAND. 

LEFT Manchester for Glasgow at two in the 
morning. At daybreak I saw the unvaried 
English landscape, composed of a meadow and a hedge- 
row on a soil not naturally rich and fertile, as in 
Flanders, but laboriously tilled, and forced by human 
industry to yield its increase. Beyond Carlisle the 
ground is undulating, with long and high slopes which 
serve for grazing ground ; it is a solitude, neither trees 
nor cultivated fields beiog visible; here and there is 
a house ; sheep dot with white points the huge green 
eminences. This everlasting green, always moist and 
always pale, produces a curious impression. 

Nearing Glasgow there are innumerable chimneys, 
flaming blast-furnaces ; I counted as many as sixteen 
in a heap. Glasgow, like Manchester, is a city of 
iron and coal. It, too, is situated in the district which 
is coloured black in the maps, and the Clyde makes of 
it a port, connecting it with the ocean. One is inclined 
to see in the physical characteristics of the locality the 
forecast of its history : the green land, the flocks, the 
dairy produce, the damp and cold climate, the barren 
soil," engender a carnivorous, an energetic, a stubborn, 
and an industrious creature; the coal, the iron, the 



A TRIP THROUGH SCOTLAND. 357 

proximity to the sea, the rivers adapted for ports, 
tempt him to become a manufacturer and a merchant. 
The population numbers nearly half a million. But 
the sight of these vast hives is always painful ; bare- 
footed children crawl in the mud ; women in rags, and 
whose torn gowns expose their persons, sit at street 
corners suckling their infants. The climate is worse 
than at Manchester. It is now the end of July, and 
the sun is shining, still I do not find my overcoat too 
heavy. Happily, the human frame can adapt itself to 
its surroundings. Grown-up girls, lolling upon the 
grass, have neither stockings nor shoes ; little boys are 
bathing in the river. Besides, particular traits of 
moral character yield a compensation. I am staying 
in a hotel frequented by commercial travellers, and 
during the twenty-four hours, especially at table, T see 
scores of them. Their physiognomy is a combination 
of landed proprietor, professor, and shoemaker, that 
of our commercial travellers being a mixture of the 
wag and the soldier. Now, in matters of business and 
commerce the former character succeeds much better 
than the latter ; and this distinction is not met with 
among the commercial travellers of the two countries 
alone. 

In the luminous morning mist, amid a line of masts 
and rigging, the steamboat sailed down the Clyde to 
the sea. We proceeded along the indented and rugged 
coast from one bay to another. These bays, being almost 
entirely closed in, resemble lakes, and the large sheets 
of water mirror an amphitheatre of green hills. All 
the corners and windings of the shore are strewn with 
white villas ; the water is crow^ded with ships ; a height 
was pointed out to me whence three hundred sail may 
often be counted at a time; a three-decker floats in 



358 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

tlie distance like a swan among sea-mews. This vast 
space spread forth and full of life, dilates the mind, 
one's chest expands more freely, one joyfully inhales 
the fresh and keen breeze. But the effect upon the 
nerves and the heart does not resemble that of the 
Mediterranean ; this air and country, instead of pre- 
disposing to pleasure, dispose to action. 

We enter a small vessel drawn by three horses, 
which transports us along the Crinan canal, between 
two banks of green turf. On the one side are rocks 
covered with brushwood ; on the other, steep declivities 
of a grey or reddish tinge ; this, indeed, is colour at 
last, a pleasure for the eye, well mingled, matched, and 
blended tints. On the bank and amid the bushes are 
wild roses, and fragile plants with white tufts smile 
with a delicate and charming grace. 

At the outlet from the canal we go on board a large 
steamer, and the sea opens out wider than ever. The 
sky is exceedingly clear and brilliant, and the waves 
break in the sunlight, quivering with reflections of 
molten tin. The vessel continues her course, leaving 
in her track a bubbling and boiling path ; sea gulls 
follow unweariedly behind her. On both sides, islands, 
rocks, boldly- cut promontories stand in sharp relief in 
the pale azure ; the scene changes every quarter of an 
hour. But on rounding every point the infinite ocean 
reappears, mingling its almost flat line with the curve 
of the white sky. 

The sun sets, we pass by Glencoe, and Ben Nevis 
appears sprinkled with snow; the bay becomes narrower, 
and the mass of water, confined amid barren mountains, 
assumes a tragic appearance. Human beings have come 
hither to little purpose ; Nature remains indomitable 
and wild ; one feels oneself upon a planet. 



A TRIP THROUGH SCOTLAND. 359 

We disembark near Fort William; tlie dying 
twilight, the fading red rays on the horizon, enable 
us to get a glimpse of a desolate country ; acres of 
peat-bog, eminences rising from the valley between 
two ranges of huge mountains. A bird of prey screams 
amid the stillness. Here and there we see some wretched 
hovels ; I am told that those on the heights are dens 
^without windows, and from which the smoke escapes 
through a hole in the roof. Many of the old men are 
blind. What an unpropitious abode for man ! 

On the morrow we ¥oyaged during four hours on the 
Caledonian canal amidst solitudes, a monotonous row of 
tree-less mountains, enormous green eminences, dotted 
here and there with fallen stones. A few sheep of a 
dwarf breed crop the scanty herbage on the slopes ; 
sometimes the winter is so severe that they die ; in the 
distance we perceive a shaggy ox, with savage eyes, the 
size of a small ass. Both plants and animals perish, 
or are stunted. In order to make such a land yield 
anything it must first be replanted with trees, as has 
been done in Sutherlandshire ; a tree renews the soil, 
it also shelters crops, flocks and herds, and human 
beings. 

The canal terminates in a series of lakes. Nothing 
is more noble than their aspect, nothing more touch- 
ing. The water, embrowned by the peat, forms a vast 
shining plain, surrounded by a circle of mountains. In 
proportion as we advance each mountain slowly grows 
upon us, becomes more conspicuous, stands forth with 
its form and physiognomy ; the farther blue peaks melt 
the one behind the other, diminishing towards the 
horizon, which they enclose. Thus they stand in 
position like an assemblage of huge, mournful beings 
around the black water wherein they are mirrored, 



360 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

while above tliem and the lake, from time to time, the 
sun flashes through the shroud of clouds. 

At last the solitude becomes less marked. The 
mountains are half-wooded at first, and then wholly 
so ; they dwindle down, the widening valleys are 
covered with harvest ; the fresh and green verdure of 
the herbage which supplies forage begins to clothe the 
hollows and the slopes. We enter Inverness, and we 
are surprised to find at almost the extreme north of 
Scotland, on the border of the Highlands, a pretty and 
lively modern town. It stretches along the two banks 
of a clear and rapid river. Many houses are newly- 
built ; we note a church, a castle, an iron bridge. In 
every part are marks of cleanliness, forethought, and 
special care. The window-panes shine, the frames 
have been painted ; the bell-handles are of copper ; 
there are flowers in the windows ; the poorest houses 
are freshly white- washed. Well dressed ladies and 
carefully-dressed gentlemen walk along the streets. 
Even a desire to possess works of art is shown by 
Ionian pillars, specimens of pure Gothic, and other 
architectural gimcrackery, and these prove at least the 
search after improvement. The land itself is clearly 
of inferior quality ; industry, order, economy, and 
labour have done everything. How great the contrast 
between all this and the aspect of a small town on the 
shores of the Mediterranean, so neglected and filthy, 
where the lower middle-class exist like worms in a 
worm-eaten beam ! 

I spent eight days in the neighbourhood with a 
friend. Nearly all the cottages are well-kept, or 
renovated. The small farms and the labourers' huts 
are surrounded with honeysuckle, and have gardens 
attached, filled with blooming roses. It is true these too 



A TRIP THROUGH SCOTLAND. 361 

low-built dwellings have often only a ground floor, and 
are narrow, because tbe cost of building materials is so 
high. It is also true that the ill- ventilated bed occu- 
pies an enclosed space in the wall because of the 
extreme cold in winter. Yet these drawbacks of soil 
and climate have been a spur to man. Everywhere, in 
the lowliest cottages, there are books — the Bible in the 
first place, in addition a few biographical works, books 
of travel, guides to health, hand-books of fishing, 
agricultural treatises, from eight to twenty volumes in 
all. Nearly all the Scotch peasants can read and 
write. Our entertainers shook hands with all the 
honest women and young girls, telling us to do like- 
wise ; the latter showed no signs of embarrassment. 
Each peasant considers himself master in his home, 
independent in spiritual as in temporal things, charged 
with his salvation, and this imparts to him a natural 
dignity. The rich and the gentry do not keep them- 
selves to themselves, nor remain apart out of distrust, 
dislike, selfishness, as in France ; they deliver public 
lectures, they expend some of their income on public 
works. A church built by one of them was pointed 
out to me ; another, who has erected a suspension 
bridge, requests the passengers in a notice to walk 
their horses across it. The wall round his park is but 
two feet in height ; every one may enter, to injure 
anything being alone forbidden. 

Between Keith and Aberdeen I met an excursion 
train, in which all the carriages were crowded. Their 
occupants were going to a religious meeting, a gather- 
ing for edification, and the expression of Protestant 
emotion ; a Revival which many celebrated preachers 
were to address. The crowd is so great that it is neces- 
sary to telegraph for more carriages, and yet in many 



362 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

carriages young girls may be seen sitting upon men's 
knees. My neighbour says that twenty thousand per- 
sons will be present ; some of them come from great 
distances, from fifty to sixty miles. During the stop- 
page of the train, the women began to sing a psalm 
with an air of sincerity and conviction; the sacred 
music here is always grave and 'sweet, and never fails 
to afford me pleasure. The carriages are third-class, 
and their occupants are shopkeepers, workmen, agri- 
cultural labourers, all of them dressed like our lower 
middle class ; their clothes, made of grey or brown 
cloth, are clean and often new ; their physiognomies 
are lively and intelligent ; the race appears more active, 
more astute than in England. These are the common 
people, but they are clearly better cultured than our 
villagers. 

On arriving at the hotel, which was a temperance 
one, I found on the landlady's table, amid many moral 
romances and books of devotion, a tract containing an 
apology for Revivals. In it the exclamations, the 
faintings, and the impassioned manifestations are jus- 
tified. *' In the highest circles, a mother, a father, are 
beside themselves for joy when a son returns whom 
they had given up for lost, and no one condemns their 
conduct as irrational ; how much more natural is it to 
act likewise when the soul suddenly feels that it is 
saved, being redeemed by grace ?^' A clergyman 
censures Sir Walter Scott in a newspaper for having 
brought the Covenanters into disfavour by his novels. 
To me it seems that the Presbyterian form of Protes- 
tantism is the appropriate poem here, sad, grandiose, 
limited in range, excellently fitted for leading man to 
look inwards, for rendering him inclined to labour, and 
for making him endure the burden of life. 



A TRIP THROUGH SCOTLAND. 363 

At service, on Sunday, there are no paintings, 
statues, or instrumental music. The church is a plain 
meeting-house, supplied with seats, furnished with a 
gallery on the first-floor, very well adapted for public 
lectures ; in truth, divine service here is nothing but a 
moral lecture. The minister takes for his text, " We 
must work out our own salvation," must not wait for 
help from others, must make an effort, must act by 
ourselves ; God will help us, grant us His grace, not 
because of our exertions (it being given gratuitousl}^), 
but in proportion to our exertions. The sermon was 
well delivered, soberly and judiciously, being devoid of 
set phrases or ejaculations. Though rather abstract, 
the precept is practical and may awaken reflections 
and individual reasoning in some heads, more especially 
in winter or when rain falls. To follow continuously 
such argumentation with the help of the Old or New 
Testament text is an occupation elevating to the mind 
and provocative of work for the conscience. Besides 
the sermon, the service consisted of reading certain 
passages of Scripture, especially from St. Paul ; of 
prayers in prose spoken aloud, psalms and hymns sung 
by the congregation. The prayers and the hymns were 
correctly insipid and wholly modern ; no one has really 
known how to address God since the great literary age 
of Shakespeare and Milton. But the psalms, though 
feebly rendered, are sustained by the strength of their 
sentiment and spirit ; even at this day a soul in 
trouble, conscious of its responsibility, can enter into 
their meaning ; they are the dialogue of the human 
heart and the Eternal Judge alone and face to face. 
By means of them, amidst controversial theology, dry 
preaching, and monotonous labour, the moral sentiment 
expands into a poetical flower. It is not too much to 



364 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

have one flower, one only, in a religion of wlilcli the 
usages and the dogmas resemble a thicket of briars. 
The congregation was very attentive ; I am told that 
Scotland is even more religious than England ; the 
most rigid Presbyterianism has not been considered in 
Scotland to be sufficiently rigid. In 1843, many per- 
sons thought that the presentation of ministers by a 
patron was contrary to the law of God; hence was 
formed, the Free Church, which is maintained by the 
voluntary subscriptions of its members. She became 
the equal of the Established Church within the space 
of a few years. At present she has an income of 
£300,000 sterling; she has founded 700 schools; she 
has adherents in every village. From the trifling 
importance of the point in dispute, from the thorough- 
ness of the separation that was efiected, from the 
promptitude, the vastness, and the cost of the work 
which was accomplished, may be estimated the theo- 
logical susceptibility and the zeal of the contributors. 
The like remark applies to Sunday observance ; com- 
pared with that of Edinburgh, a London Sunday is 
pleasant. 

The surrounding landscape is very neat and very 
pretty ; the soil appears to be mediocre ; but the tillage 
is less regular than in England. A ruder Nature 
lends herself more reluctantly to discipline; the sur- 
face is undulating and would please a painter. Flowers 
abound, they are delicate and dainty, more particularly 
the wild roses, which bloom along all the road-sides. 
Small, clear, and murmuring streams meander through 
the meadows. On the slopes the violet heaths are 
spread like a silken carpet under the scanty firs. 
Higher still are large patches of evergreen wood, and, 
as soon as the mountain is approached, a brown circle 



A TRIP THROUGH SCOTLAND. 365 

of barren eminences may be discerned towards the 
horizon. At the end of an hour the desert begins ; 
the climate is inimical to life, even to that of plants. A 
tarn, the tint of burnt topaz, lies coldly and sadly 
between stony slopes whereon a few tufts of fern and 
heather grow here and there. Half a league higher is 
a second tarn, which appears still more dismal in the 
rising mist. Around, patches of snow are sprjnkled on 
the peaks, and these descending in rivulets produce 
morasses. The small country ponies, with a sure 
instinct, surmount the bog, and we arrive at an 
elevation whence the eye, as far as it can reach, 
embraces nothing but an amphitheatre of desolate, yet 
green summits ; owing to the destruction of the timber, 
everything else has perished ; a scene of ruined nature 
is far more melancholy a spectacle than any human 
ruins. On our return across the lake, a bag-piper 
played on his instrument. The music is strange and 
wild, its effects harmonising with the aspect of the 
bubbling streams, veined with striking or sombre re- 
flections. The same simple note, a kind of dance 
music, runs through the whole piece in an incorrect 
and odd manner, and continually recurs, but it is 
always harsh and rough ; it might be likened to an 
orange shrivelled with the cold and rendered bitter. 

These are the Highlands. From Braemar to Perth 
we journey through them for many long miles. It is 
always a solitude; sometimes five or six valleys in 
succession are wholly bare, and one may travel for an 
hour without seeing a tree ; then for another hour it is 
rare merely to see in the distance a wretched twisted 
birchen-tree, which is dying or is dead. It would be 
some compensation if the rock were naked, and ex- 
hibited its mineral structure in all its fulness and 



366 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

ruggedness. But tliese mountains, of no great ele- 
vation, are but bosses with flabby outlines, they have 
fallen to pieces, and are stone heaps, resembling the 
remains of a quarry. In winter, torrents of water 
uproot the heather, leaving on the slopes a leprous, 
whitened scar, badly tinted by the too feeble sun. The 
summits are truncated, and want boldness. Patches of 
miserable verdure seam their sides and mark the oozing 
of springs ; the remainder is covered with brownish 
heather. Below, at the very bottom, a torrent ob- 
structed by stones, struggles along its channel, or 
lingers in stagnant pools. One sometimes discerns a 
hovel, with a stunted cow. The grey, low-lying sky, 
completes the impression of lugubrious monotony. 

Our conveyance ascends the last mountain. At 
length we see a steep declivity, a great rocky wall; 
but it is unique. We descend again, and enter a 
habitable tract. Cultivation occurs first on the lower 
parts, then on the slopes ; the declivities are wooded, 
and then entire mountains ; forests of firs spread their 
sombre mantle over the crests ; fields of oats and barley 
extend on all sides ; we perceive pretty clumps of trees, 
houses surrounded by gardens and flowers, and then 
culture of all descriptions upon the lessening hills, here 
and there a park and a modern mansion. The sun bursts 
forth and shines merrily, but without heat ; the fertile 
plain expands, abounding in promises of convenience 
and pleasure, and we enter Perth thinking about the 
historical narrations of Sir "Walter Scott, and the con- 
trast between the mountain and the plain, the revilings 
and scornini^s interchanged between the inhabitants of 
the Highlands and the Lowlands. From Perth to 
Edinburgh the landscape continues attractive and 
varied. More undulating, more fragmentary, poorer 



A TRIP THROUGH SCOTLAND. 367 

than England, Scotland is more picturesque ; Nature, 
less uniform and less tractable, is not there a mere 
manufactory of milk and meat. 

So is Edinburgh compared with London. Instead 
of a regular, modern, and flat city, the centre of busi- 
ness, of comfort, and of luxury, we find an old city 
rich in contrasts, extending over three valleys and 
several eminences, where steep streets, tall houses, the 
multiplied imprints of the past, afford unexpected 
views. A feudal castle crowns one of the heights. 
Thence, in descending towards Holyrood, along the 
sides of the street, old-fashioned alleys plunge abruptly 
towards the bottom ; these are the wynds and closes, 
genuine dens of the middle ages, whereof the walls 
blackened by rain and smoke have retained their 
leprosy during four hundred years. Round or square 
towers cling together and hang over. Narrow, odd- 
looking and ill-shapen windows are barred like the 
air holes of a prison. Stone stairs, with low and slimy 
steps, wind in the obscurity of the interior, amidst 
creeping shadows of which a ray of light makes us 
feel the depth. On the steps are crowds of infants, 
w^ith bare feet, white skulls, and crouching men taking 
food, recalling the fantastic figures, the semi-glooms, 
the strange guests which people the cellars of Rem- 
brandt. 

Quantities of statues, of Gothic and chiefly Grecian 
monuments, and two picture galleries. The Calton 
Hill, with its colonnade and two or three temples, 
aspires to be an Acropolis, and the erudite, lettered, 
and philosophical city styles itself the Northern 
Athens. But how greatly out of place is antique 
architecture here ! The pale haze, scourged by the 
wind, floats and spreads itself in all directions. A 



368 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

vapoury veil lingers on the declivity of the Calton Hill 
and winds around its columns. The climate is at 
variance with these forms of a dry and warm country, 
and the wants, the tastes, the habits of the people here 
are more at variance still. For example, in this place 
the prevailing temptation is to give way to drunken- 
ness ; and temperance societies oppose it by a mixture 
of Biblical maxims and utilitarian arguments. Con- 
cerning this subject, I saw placards on which two 
expressive figures are pourtrayed, the one representing 
"a man,'' the worker, the other '* a thing," the 
drunkard; while appropriate precepts are written 
underneath. Sixpence a day for ale and tobacco 
make so much at the year's end, and it is proved by 
statistics that with this sum so many articles of bedding 
or of furniture, so many pairs of shoes, so many shirts 
may be purchased along with the indispensable Family 
Bible. This calculation and this mention of the Bible 
are traits of character. On entering the picture gallery 
afterwards, and looking at the three or four great 
works by Yandyck, one by Garafolo, one by Yeronese, 
and especially two sketches of women by Tintoret, I 
felt as if transported to the opposite side of the globe. 



XXXY. 

RETURN HOME. FRENCHMEN AND ENGLISHMEN. 

LEAYING Edinburgh on the left, one beholds the 
sea, surrounded by distant mountains, which 
gradually diminish in height, and form a delicate and 
carefully- wrought border to the great shining deep. 
Berwick is passed, looking lively and picturesque, with 
its red-tiled houses and tranquil harbour, in which lie 
a few vessels. Farther on comes JN^ewcastle, where the 
coal descends directly into ships for the supply of the 
coast towns of the North Sea, a city of coal and manu- 
factories, black, smoky, and gloomy as a prison. Along 
the whole route the country is flat, and almost entirely 
destitute of trees or hedges ; at intervals, however, a 
small wooded cove shelters a hamlet. But from one end 
to the other of this journey the sea is in sight, and the 
train skirts the coast, now being encompassed by, and 
now overhanging, a belt of rocks. The heart dilates 
before this vast shimmering sheet of water ; the indis- 
tinct, even line, merges into the lower edge of the 
sky ; tiny hillocks of foam fleck its azure with white 
spots. ' Two or three ships flit like birds in the dis- 
tance ; overhead, the great pale sky curves its vault, 
and we forget the troubled spectacle of the human ant- 
heap in reflecting afresh upon the calnmess, the sim- 
plicity, and the divine immutability of things. 

B B 



370 NOTES ON ENGLAND, 

At York in tlie morning. A graceful and clear 
river shines softly between rows of Gothic towers; 
farther off is a bridge, a heap of black boats; we cross 
the water in a ferry-boat ; there is nobody in the streets ; 
the air reaches our cheeks as fresh as in the country. 
We pass by old-fashioned houses, of which each story 
overlaps the one below it ; we see low archways, curved 
doors studded with large nails. Grass grows in the 
interstices of the pavement ; in a square near the 
cathedral, trees, centuries old, spread their leafy domes. 
All is green, clean, peaceful, savouring of olden times, 
as in a Flemish city. The vast and venerable cathedral 
forms an addition to the resemblance. Intact without, 
this Gothic colossus rears itself higher and more spa- 
cious than Notre-Dame, with massive power, under 
the three towers which crown it. Within, the icono- 
clasts of the Reformation have stripped it ; it is white- 
washed, naked, and dismal. The only remnant of the 
old ornamentation is the enclosure of the choir, a laby- 
rinth of carving, of statuettes, of hangiDgs, of small 
sculptured pulpits, which commingle their forms with 
delicate and endless fantasy. How charming are these 
quiet old cities ! But in the hurry of the journey such 
spectacles flit before the mind like so many pieces of 
scenery. 

From York to London. — As my duty must be per- 
formed to the end, I remain in a third-class carriage 
for nine hours, in order to have a good view of the 
commonalty. The two most striking types are those 
I have previously met with — the sturdy individual 
and the worn-out individual, the one having the 
figure and broad shoulders of an athlete, ruddy com- 
plexion, red whiskers, eyes of a bull, rough gestures, 
a gruff or threatening expression, yet turning at 



RETURN HOME. 371 

times to kindliness wlien a smile lights it up or lie is 
spoken to politely ; tke other having twinkling eyes, 
compressed features, his neckcloth tightened to the 
verge of strangulation, at once worn out and starched. 
Looking at the country people, I note that none have 
the form and mien of our peasants — that shrewd, 
defiant, yet astonished look which proclaims another 
species, a descendant of the labourers under compulsion, 
an ancient fellah, an intelligent yet uncultured race, 
still bound to the soil on which his heart is set, and 
which is the limit of all his thoughts. The villagers 
who enter at the intermediate stations have more the 
appearance of workmen or of small tradespeople ; in 
truth an English farm is as much a manufactory as any 
other, giving employment to day labourers and bailiffs. 
From York to London the landscape confirms this idea. 
A square of verdure enclosed by a hedge, then another, 
and so on in succession, always of large extent, of 
monotonous regularity, without any of the varieties 
which denote small properties and peasant culture. 
In the same carriage with me is a Newcastle family, 
the husband, the wife, and her mother, small trades- 
people, pretty well dressed and in new clothes. They 
are going to Yenice for pleasure, and yet they are not 
rich, seeing that they travel third-class. Journeying 
so far in so uncomfortable a way, and at a cost neces- 
sarily considerable, manifests a very strong passion for 
travel. Families by no means well-to-do, with which 
I am acquainted, expend all their surplus in the 
same fashion ; with their forty or fifty pounds of sav- 
ings they go to the Continent every year — -to Holland, 
to Norway. They put nothing aside ; each year has to 
provide for its wants and suflS.ce for its labour. My 
three fellow-passengers prepare themselves conscien- 



372 NOTi:S ON ENGLAND. 

tiously ; they have their Marray, a manual of Italian 
phrases, a special guide-hook filled with figures for the 
passage over the Alps. The mother wearing spectacles, 
respectable, silent, resigned, sits bolt upright with the 
patience of a stoic upon the hard wooden seat. The 
wife cons Italian phrases, and looks up the words in a 
pocket dictionary. Her husband is qualified to fight 
the battle of modern existence ; active, energetic, a face 
pitted with small-pox, earnest and ardent eyes. What 
strange visitors to Venice ! ^Nevertheless, they are 
sensible folks, capable of learning, and who, if they do 
not appreciate painting, will bring back with them all 
kinds of information and useful notions. Since leaving 
Glasgow I have conversed with numbers of my fellow- 
passengers of the middle or lower class, a commercial 
traveller, a house-painter, shopkeepers, tavern-keepers. 
They never indulge in empty chatter ; they have not 
too absurd ideas about foreigners ; they are by no 
means hasty in speech ; they are never boasters ; I have 
always found that they possess a fund of upright and 
rational ideas. 

London, Dover, and the Steamer in the rain. — From 
London to Dover in the first-class, a would-be gentle- 
man proposed a game of cards to his neighbours, at 
which bets were made, every stake being five pounds. 
At first they refused, then they sufiered themselves to 
be persuaded, and naturally they lost. I calculate that 
in an hour the card-player gained one hundred and 
fifty pounds. What struck me were the players' faces ; 
not one wrinkle, not one gesture, not a single exclama- 
tion ; concentrated and suppressed pride ; but I divined 
the attraction, the dull and strong passion, the obsti- 
nacy, the determination to conquer. One of them, a 
Btout and big man with the face of an immovable ox, 



FRENCHMEN AND ENGLISHMEN 373 

constantly doubled his stake, drawing out his bank- 
notes with the air of a combatant in a boxing-match. 
The risk pleases them, and produces the same effect on 
their minds that spirits do upon their palates. 

One of my friends returned at the same time as 
myself, and we compared the result of our observations. 
"Which of the two forms of civilisation is tho more 
valuable, that of England or that of France ? That is 
too vague ; we must divide and distinguish. Three 
things are superior in England. 

The Political Constitution. — It is stable, and is in 
no danger, like ours, of being forcibly overturned 
and remodelled every twenty years. It is liberal, 
and permits individuals to take part as actors or 
assistants in public affairs, instead of regarding 
them with mere curiosity; it confides their guidance 
to the upper class, which is best qualified to direct 
them satisfactorily, and which finds in so doing their 
natural occupation, in place of withering or being cor- 
rupted for want of something to do, as with us. It 
lends itself without perturbations to continued improve- 
ments, and tends in practice to good government, that 
which pays the most respect to individual initiative, 
and confides power to the most worthy. The Eng- 
lish Three per Cents, are at 94 ; the citizens speak and 
form associations at pleasure : no Press in the world is 
equally well informed, nor are any assemblies equally 
competent. 

Religion. — It subordinates rites and dogmas to mo- 
rality. It inculcates self-government, the supremacy 
of conscience, the cultivation of the will. It leaves a 
sufficiently large space to interpretation and to indivi- 
dual sentiment. It is not actually hostile to the spirif of 
modern science, nor to the tendencies of modern times. 



374 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

Its ministers are married ; it founds schools ; it approves 
of action ; it does not counsel asceticism. Thus asso- 
ciated with the laity, it has authority over them ; a 
young mall entering life, the adult providing for his 
career, are restrained and guided up to a certain point 
by a collection of ancient, popular, and fortifying 
beliefs, which furnish them with rules of conduct and 
an exalted idea of the world. Among us a young man 
of twenty, being obliged to frame this rule by and for 
himself, does not succeed in doing so till late, some- 
times does so imperfectly^, or never does it at all. 

The Greatness of the Acquired Wealth, combined icith 
the Increased Poicer of Troducing and Amassing. — 
Every useful work executed centuries ago, is trans- 
mitted and accumulated without loss ; England has not 
been invaded for eight hundred years, and has had no 
civil war for two centuries. At the present day her 
capital is several times larger than that of France. 
The tokens of comfort and opulence are more numerous 
there than in any other country of the world. Examine 
the statistics, the calculations of her commerce, of her 
industry, of her agriculture, of her annual profits. This 
is true of moral as well as of physical matters ; not 
only does England understand better than France how 
to manage her public and private affairs, enrich her 
soil, improve her cattle, superintend a manufacture, 
clear, colonize, and turn to account distant countries ; 
but she knows still better how to cultivate herself. If 
we consider but the select few, we shall find, it appears, 
minds in France of equal calibre, except where politics 
are concerned, to the most notable minds of England, 
perhaps even a few superior minds, of wider and more 
philosophic range, at once more comprehensive and of 
finer mould. But the majority of those with an average 



FRENCHMEN AND ENGLISHMEN 3/.< 

intellect, a country gentleman, an ordinary clergyman, 
is endowed here with more extensive and more solid 
knowledge. Assuredly, his head is better furnished, 
his intellectual furniture being less old-fashioned and 
less incomplete. Above all, the number of persons 
adequately informed and capable of forming an opinion 
in political matters is much greater. Compare one of 
our English clergymen and English gentlemen with 
the bourgeois and cures of France ; or, better still, 
examine in turn the daily food of their intellects, the 
English newspaper and the French newspaper, espe- 
cially a French gazette of a small town and an English 
gazette of a small town; the distance is prodigious. 
Now, it is not the select few, it is the average majority 
which gives the tone, inspires opinion, conducts affairs. 
On the other hand, three things are better in France. 

The Climate. — This is self-evident; yet without 
personal experience and prolonged reflection it is hard 
to imagine the effect of six or eight degrees of latitude 
at the least, in warding off bodily suffering and mental 
sadness. 

The Distribution of Wealth. — There are four or five 
millions of landed proprietors in France, and properties 
after death are divided in equal portions among the 
children. On the whole, then, our institutions, our 
instincts, our habits combine to provide that no one 
has too large a slice, and that every one has a small 
one. Many live poorly, but nearl}^ all can exist with- 
out too great difficulty. The wretched are less wretched ; 
the labourer, entirely dependent upon the work of his 
hands, does not feel that beneath him yawns a dreadful 
abyss, a black and bottomless pit, in which, owing to 
an accident, a strike, an attack of sickness, he and 
his family will be engulfed ; having fewer wants ajid 



376 NOTES ON ENGLAND. 

fever children lie bears a lighter burden ; besides, want 
debases bim less, and be is less drunken. 

Domestic and Social Life. — Several circumstances 
render it more easy and more enjoyable. In tbe 
first place, tbe natural temperament is gaj^, more 
open, and more neighbourly. Then the absolute, or 
nearly absolute, equality established by law or by 
custom between parents and children, between the 
eldest son and his younger brothers, between husband 
and wife, between the noble and the commoner, 
between the rich and the poor, su23presses much con- 
straint, represses much tyranny, prevents much super- 
ciliousness, smoothes many asperities. In France, in 
the narrow domestic circle, the members open their 
hearts, enter into the spirit of the m1om.ent, combine to 
live together freely and affectionately; in the large 
social circle, they chat, display a half- confidence, meet 
together in order to pass an hour freely and pleasantly. 
There is less constraint at home and in society ; kindli- 
ness and politeness supplant subordination with advan- 
tage. To my mind a human being among us feels less 
frequently and less heavily the pressure of another 
rough and despotic human being's hand upon his head. 
Final cause of expansion : one may say everything in 
conversation, tell a story and uphold a theory to the 
end. Romances, criticism, art, philosophy, violent 
curiosity, have not to submit to the trammels which 
religion, morality, and official propriety impose upon 
them across the Channel. At Paris we think with 
more independence, with a more entire disinterested- 
ness, in a wholly abstract style, without pre-occupying 
ourselves about the consequences, without standing in 
dread of the thunders of public reprobation. 

In fine, all these differences contribute to render the 



FRENCHMEN AND ENGLISHMEN. 377 

Englislimaii more powerful and the Frencliinan happier. 
The costume of the former is more substantial, that of 
the latter more comfortable. The former has reason 
for enlarging his garment which cramps him at the 
corners, the latter would act wisely in avoiding those 
hasty movements which may rend his flimsy material. 
But it appears to me that each of them has the style 
of dress which he prefers. 



THE END. 



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